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The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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In this book, "deregulation" is a four-letter word: a synonym for leaving the U.S. taxpayer, U.S. markets and the U.S. reputation wide open to greedy mindless homegrown plutocrats. In short, it is a synonym for leaving the nation vulnerable to conscienceless unpatriotic Wall Street thieves.

Here in easy to understand language, Robert Scheer has pealed back the layers that cover up the whole stinking mess that has become "stripped-down vulnerable deregulated America." The method of robbery is basically a five-step political process: (1) "demagog" FDR and all existing regulations relentlessly as the enemy of free enterprise; (2) use paid lobbyist to help justify, tear-down and then rewrite new regulations; (3) use lobbyists' contributions to buy off the votes of key politicians in both parties to open up the laws for the impending thievery; (4) once legislation is passed, oversee the Wall Street financial casino with watchdogs that do not watch; and then (5) appoint members of the plutocracy who stand to gain the most, as facilitators and the palace guards of policy.

The present system of "high-level state sanctioned grand larceny" was designed and implemented, not by Ronald Reagan, or GW Bush, but by William Jefferson Clinton with the help of none other than the gang of four -- Timothy Geitner, Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and Lawrence Summers. However, the unsung hero of the grand heist, was Windy Lee Gramm, senator Phil Gramm's paramour and then wife, (who as a grad student was first his lover and then very quickly his wife). It was this "devious duo" that engineered the plans for the ultimate robbery of the American economic system.

It was Windy's computer models, of exotic financial instruments that unleashed the derivatives market (of "securitized (packaged subprime bundles) loans, "credit default swaps," etc.) on an unsuspecting American public. She of course then was immediately promoted to an oversight position to oversee the very OTC commodities markets she had help prepare for raiding. Then before the flax hit the fan, she was out of "Dodge" and off to Enron, where there she helped with, among other things, some now infamous creative accounting.

However, the skids for raiding the U.S. financial markets had been well-greased before Mrs. Gramm rode into town on her husband's white horse. Roosevelt's New Deal Reforms, which had put a check on the Robber Baron's of the 1920s had been under attack since Ronald Reagan's administration. But Reagan got no further than "attack rhetoric." It took the "faux liberal," Bill Clinton, and his gang of four (Rubin, Geithner, Greenspan, and Summers) to put Reagan's ideas into practice and to then pull off the ultimate economic heist. Once their buddies had their billions, and all the illicit bonuses were paid, only then did we realized that the U.S. treasury had been sacked in broad daylight.

But now Obama appears to be even "slicker" than "slick" Willie himself. While campaigning against the Clinton's during the democratic primary, Obama had used the "no financial tricks" economic guru, Warren Buffet as his chief economic advisor. Buffet had described the financial "dirty tricks" designed by Wendy Gramm and later fully implemented by "the gang of four as "Rubinomics," as "weapons of financial mass destruction."

During the run up to the election, Obama had essentially agreed with Buffet, that the Clinton/Bush/Gramm approach was headed straight to disaster. Yet, once in office, he not only changed his tune, but it seems he also had no place on his financial team for the renown Buffet. Instead, he retained as his chief advisors (and to preside over recovery from the "Gramm/Cheney/Bush/Clinton mess), the same "economic hit team" that underwrote the mess in the first place. So under Obama, the "the gang of four" got in on the ground floor to set up a new "kinder and gentler" version of America's casino capitalism, although one more carefully covered over with a thinly veiled limp-wristed set of regulations that are being sold to us by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank as "real" financial regulations.

With Scheer's book, I guarantee that the next heist, which is already well into the making, will not be as quite as easy to pull over on the American people as the last one. Five Stars

"Steal a little and they throw you in jail - Steal a lot and they make you king" - Bob Dylan

Imagine, for a moment, that a burly stranger takes your wallet, removes $20, and walks away. It stands to reason that, at the very least, you would want the culprit caught. You might even take the time to file a police report and describe the thief to a sketch artist. Now imagine instead, a very well dressed thief, with a dozen or so well dressed associates, who manage to take your house, your job, and even to diminish the value of your 401K, would you want this group caught just as badly? And if it turns out that this second heist was the work of identifiable thieves, would you spend the time necessary to learn who they were and how the deed was done? Or would you rather squeal and scream at whoever and whatever is directly in front of you?

That is the choice you face when deciding whether or not to read "The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street". In it, veteran journalist and Truthdig editor, Robert Scheer does exactly what the subtitle implies. He describes in detail how we got into the economic mess we are in.

Of course, everyone knows some of what happened. Most, probably suspect that both bankers and brokers had a hand in creating the real estate mess. Most have heard something about derivatives, CDOs, Alt-A loans, and subprime loans. And those government sponsored bank bailouts are, by now, infamous - even if there seems to be widespread confusion about which administration (Bush or Obama) did what. But when did this all start and what are the political, economic, and ideological connections? More simply, what is the answer to a question posed by a bewildered George W. Bush: "How did this happen?"

As Mr. Scheer tells it, the crime unfolded over almost 3 decades. Ronald Reagan laid the groundwork with the indispensible help of antiregulatory true believers Dr. Wendy Gramm and her husband, Senator Phil Gramm. Scheer carefully describes their efforts to overturn the financial regulatory system introduced by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The top target, dubbed the "holy grail of Wall Street," was the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which regulated the financial services industry by erecting a wall between the commercial banks (entrusted with depositors' FDIC insured funds), investment banks, and insurance companies. Although by the end of Reagan's presidency Glass-Steagall remained in place, Scheer explains how President Reagan had been wildly successful on the ideological front in selling the view that big government was the cause economic stagnation.

Then, with Big Government as the newly accepted enemy of unrestricted wealth, the Republicans (in the Reagan and in both Bush administrations) found a way to achieve at least a part of what they wanted by appointing regulators who hated regulations. Thus, in 1988, Wendy Gramm became chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The foxes were now charged with guarding the henhouse.

While Scheer credits the Republicans with laying the necessary foundation, he is consistently nonpartisan and the real deregulatory victories are shown to come during the Clinton administration. Working in the ideologically anti-government atmosphere that he inherited, it is Bill Clinton, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Fed chair Alan Greenspan, along with the Republican Congress, that successfully ended Glass-Steagall.

The story is complex, but, as written here, understandable. The end of effective financial regulation, the end of Glass-Steagall, comes in 1999 with the Financial Services Modernization Act. A year later that is followed by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which insured the legality of unregulated over-the-counter derivatives and paved the way for the rise and fall of Enron and Arthur Anderson.

If this seems too much like a story composed of dry and difficult economic statistics it is not. Scheer laces the tale with fascinating details, like the inclusion in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, of the "Enron loophole" which specifically exempted energy trading from regulatory scrutiny. And there is the story of the largely unsung heroine, Brooksley Born, who as the successor to Wendy Gramm at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission struggled valiantly to save us from the coming unregulated nightmare of unlimited over-the-counter derivatives including those labeled "Collateralized Debt Obligations" (CDOs) which allowed loan originators to retain no residual risk for loans they made to those obviously unable to pay.

The tale of Born's meeting with Alan Greenspan, attributed to an article published in Stanford Magazine, is almost surreal. Greenspan begins by saying to Born, "Well, Brooksley, I guess you and I will never agree about fraud." So Born asks, "What is there not to agree on?" "Well," Greenspan replies, "you probably will always believe that there should be laws against fraud, and I don't think there is any need for a law against fraud." Given what we now know about former NASDAQ chair, Bernie Madoff, Enron, Worldcom, and Global Crossing, it is not hard to imagine this Alan Greenspan as a character in Alice in Wonderland with Alice remarking, off to the side, "curiouser and curiouser!"

In "The Great American Stickup" Robert Scheer has clearly laid out the connections that run from Ronald Reagan through the Gramms and on to Enron; from Robert Rubin at Treasury to Citigroup; from Citigroup back to Enron and on to the subprime loan craze. He traces the evolution of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from government-sponsored creations to privately owned, and publicly traded, financial monsters. Scheer writes incisively about the incestuous world of finance and government where Goldman Sachs is nicknamed Government Sachs. He connects Hank Paulson and Goldman to AIG and Timothy Geithner to President Obama and back to AIG.

The saddest connection of all may turn out to be the one that runs from candidate Obama to President Obama. Early in the book Scheer quotes Obama's important speech at Cooper Union where the candidate astutely observed, "The American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it."

But that speech, with its clear recognition of the wisdom of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, stands in stark contrast to the policies of President Obama and leads me to one last quote from Alice (or, as I would like to imagine, from President Obama himself): "I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

Buy this book, read it, and discuss it with friends and neighbors over a pot of tea, or if you prefer, a pot of coffee.

The Great American Stickup is an excellent read! Mr. Scheer does an outstanding job analyzing how we got into the financial crisis and, in doing so, sheds light on what is needed to avoid a repeat. The book is full of fascinating and important anecdotes, exposing key actors and clear details of actions they took that sewed the seeds of our financial meltdown. His style is highly engaging -- given his journalistic credentials, this isn't a surprise. I have never read an account that so clearly lays out the relationship between Washington and Big Business and its impact on Main Street. His case isn't a partisan one and that makes this book particularly powerful.

An excellent book that explains in an easy to read, clearly written way the story of how unbridled greed and the bipartisan sell out of America's working class brought us the catastrophe that is our current economic situation.

Makes the point very clearly that the two major political parties of today are just two sides of the same coin, owned and controlled by the banks and financial services industry which have become unbelievably rich in our current climate of no regulation, defunded regulation and rampant corruption.

In a moral world people like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Tim Geitner, Henry Paulson, Alan Greenspan and Barack Obama would be in prison where they belong.

Their betrayal of the public trust is shameful and there should be accountability for what they have done.

This book does an excellent job of revealing, in chronological format, what names are attached to the actions which brought the United States Economy to its knees, in September 2008.

It reveals the behind-the-scene alliances between Wall Street and our government. It will amaze you, yet disappoint you in your own government.

Starting in 1998 it moves forward, explaining the actions taken by our government, which is, and has been, in bed with Wall Street, and the impact those actions ultimately had on our economy.

Curiously, we find those same names, who originally championed repeal of the Glass Steagall act, once again in prime positions, today, on Wall Street and in the government - ready for the next opportunity to bring this nation to its knees, while fattening their own personal bank accounts. And if Wall Street does create another financial melt-down, courtesy of their stupidity and greed?

Not to worry - we'll just stick to the taxpayers - our boys are already in place, in the Obama administration, to bail us out.

Like with the recent health care reform, our government likes to put foxes in charge of the hen houses on Wall Street. Health insurers were asked for input to the health care reform. Now who do you suppose the insurers would favor? The population needing universal health care, and not being able to afford it -- or the insurance industry? You got it -- insurance fees are already going up !

Would it be any surprise to find out that the 2010 financial "reforms" favored those who created this 2008 melt-down -- favored them mainly by what they are NOT prevented from doing in the future ??

Federal Prosecutors should read this book, and focus their sites on Washington.

Even with the most recent financial reform by Obama's administration in 2010 - the Glass Steagall Act was not re-instated - so we are still at risk for the same type of event, created by the same directors on wall street.

The book does an excellent job of telling it like it is.

While any book is nothing more than a particular author's take on the situation - this one rings particularly true.

The story of the deregulation of financial markets was 40 years in the making and less than 10 years from execution to worldwide systemic collapse. This is a well written narrative of the journey of one man's dream (Ronald Reagan) from inception to reality and of the many people who helped to facilitate that dream along it's way. From President Reagan and his political roots as a spokesperson for GE to graduate economics student Wendy Lee (Gramm) on to President Clinton who acted as cheerleader in chief for the ultimate deregulation and on through today. No one escapes the extremely well researched glare of the author's investigative glare. It plays out like a grand robbery, planned decades ago and sitting there on the sidelines waiting for the right time to be put in play. This book should be required reading for the entire American populace and Robert Scheer should be lauded from sea to shining sea for his effort to shine the light of transparency on the illegal and immoral and often plain foolish actions of the very people we've trusted with our welfare.

Read this book and then, if you love your country, share it.

This author is very easy to read and very enlightening. He uses plenty of names, dates, facts, and figures but not to the detriment of the reading experience. Unfortunately, by the time you are finished with the book, you realize that unless you are among the top one percent of wealth in America, you are playing in a game that is TOTALLY RIGGED! Bernie Maddoff is small potatoes in the face of the heads of the U.S. Treasury, Goldman, Travelers, Lehman, Fannie Mae, Clinton, Reagan, and more. They have robbed us blind and made us pay for the privilege of victim recovery. The battle in America is not between the Republicans and the Democrats. It is between the super wealthy, greedy upper executives and the rest of us. While we battle it out at the polls, they steal EVERYTHING.

This book is a must read for every citizen who aspires to be informed.

Scheer has done an excellent job in this book in exposing Obama's allegiance to economic,financial,housing,and health care policies that are basically formulated by Wall Street connected economists and policy makers.The socalled " reform " legislation that Obama has passed,such as the financial reform package written by Wall Street controlled Democratic politicians like Senator Dodd, Senator Schumer,and Representative Frank ,is like a swiss cheese-full of all kinds of loop holes that will allow Wall Street to(a) continue creating the financial bubbles that the hedge funds,private equity firms ,investment banks and giant commercial banks have been generating since the 1984 period and (b)continue the destruction of the American industrial -manufacturing sector througn a libertarian " free trade " policy that was explicitly rejected by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations in 1776 (See pp. 434-439 of the Modern Library (Cannan ) edition with the foreward by Max Lerner for Smith's obliteration of the " Free Trade " argument).

The Wall Street attack on Main Street is a two pronged attack emphasizing continued financial speculation and securitization practices based on the increased use of financial derivatives combined with the hollowing out and downsizing of the American industrial manufacturing sector.It emphasizes a speeding up of the current rate of outsourcing of American jobs.

I have subtracted one half of a star due to Scheer's silence about the fact that the Wall Street war on the lower and middle income classes has been extensively discussed by Ross Perot,Patrick Buchanan,Lou Dobbs,Paul O'Neill and other conservatives since the early 1990's.Perhaps a third Party coalition is needed in which Scheer and Nader would join forces with the above mentioned real conservatives to prevent or mitigate the current negative economic trend .

The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street by Robert Scheer

"The Great American Stickup" is an even-handed book about the conflict of interests of American finances and politicians from Reagan's presidency to this day. This insightful 304-page book is composed of the following nine chapters: 1. It Was the Economy, Stupid, 2. The High Priestess of the Reagan Revolution, 3. The Clinton Bubble, 4. The Valiant Stand of Brooksley Born, 5. They Have No Shame, 6. Robert Rubin Rakes It In at Citigroup, 7. Poverty Pimps, 8. Goldman Cleans Up, 9. Sucking Up to the Bankers: Crisis Handoff from Bush to Obama.

Positives:
1. Well-written, well-researched book that is accessible to the masses.
2. This is the most even-handed book I've read about the causes of the economic disasters of the past 30 years or so. Mr. Scheer does not hold back in placing blame where blame is due.
3. Does not waste time laying out the foundation of this book, "For it was this Wall Street and Democratic Party darling, along with this clique of economist super-friends: - Alan Greenspan, Lawrence Summers, and a few others - who inflated a giant real estate bubble by purposely not regulating the derivatives market, resulting in oceans of money that was poured into bad loans sold as safe investments."
4. A very good explanation of the financial instruments that became the downfall of the economy: swaps, derivatives, and collaterized debt obligations to name a few.
5. The infuriating scapegoating of borrowers for the economic collapse caused by the lenders.
6. The wisdom of FDR's New Deal reforms that helped preserve capitalism from its own excesses.
7. The importance of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.
8. The beginning of regulation easing by President Reagan as evidenced by the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982.
9. Senator Gramm's undeniable legislative marks that opened the floodgates of the abuse of financial power: the Financial Modernization Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
10. Not to be left behind Mrs. Gramm leaves an indelible mark of her own. Can you say derivatives?
11. Deregulation, deregulation, deregulation...
12. The Weill-Jackson alliance and its impact. And from Jackson's perspective how it hurt those he intended to help...
13. The heroic efforts of one Brooksley Born who attacked unregulated OTC derivatives.
14. The deals of President Clinton.
15. The three "amigos": Rubin, Summers and Greenspan.
16. The Enron loophole.
17. The power of lobbyists.
18. Many examples of conflict of interests.
19. Citigroup and the subprime craze.
20. The shocking compensation of the main players involved...good work if you can find it.
21. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in proper context. Excellent explanation.
22. Countrywide and its "connections".
23. The incentive to "cook the books".
24. The power of influence, consider the case of Goldman Sachs.
25. Honestly, can we just clone Senator Sanders.
26. Bailout nation!
27. Why it may be too late for President Obama to turn the tide.
28. The harsh yet clear realization that Wall Street runs this country...
29. Comprehensive Notes section with plenty of web links.

Negatives:
1. A bit repetitive.
2. No links to Notes to speak off. A shame.
3. It can be dry at times.
4. Not as engaging as some other books of this topic.

In summary, this was an educational and informative book. The impact of deregulations that were backed by both parties caused enormous damage to our world's economy. Mr. Scheer does a wonderful job of explaining how, who and when all this happened. He also takes down the myth that financial markets are self-correcting. It's a very good and I recommend it.

Further suggestions: "Winner-Take All Politics" by Jacob S. Hacker, "Screwed the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class" by Thom Hartmann, "The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America..." by Michael W. Hudson, "Perfectly Legal..." by David Cay Johnston, and "The Looting of America" by Les Leopold.

... and How Dubya Passed the Task of Preserving It to Obama!"

That's my own alternate sub-title for this sorry tale of skulduggery, which I offer to Robert Scheer gratis, for later revised editions. Meanwhile, here are some key passages from the latter chapters of The Great American Stickup:

page 223: The Wall Street bailouts were a frantic response to a crisis that resulted from the radical deregulation pushed by former Goldman Sachs honcho Robert Rubin when he was President Clinton's Treasury secretary. Another Goldman Sachs chairman-turned-Treasury-secretary, Henry Paulson, in the Bush administration, designed what became the more than $1-trillion bank bailout that will go down as the greatest swindle in U.S. history.

page 237: Defenders of the Obama administration justified the appointment of the likes of Summers and Geithner as necessary in order to enlist their expertise in unraveling the market disaster they had helped to create. And on July 15, 2009 ... in a column they jointly wrote for the Washington Post, the pair at last publicly confronted the error of their ways. ... "This current financial crisis has many causes .. in the widespread use of poorly understood financial instruments, in shortsightedness and excessive leverage at financial institutions. But it was also the product of basic failures in financial supervision and deregulation."

page 242: Obama got the message and caved. It would be the defining moment of his presidency, as he subsequently backtracked on even his very modest demands for financial reform that so alarmed Wall Street ... Suddenly the bailout was the responsibility not of George W. Bush, who initiated it, but rather Obama , who inherited it. What an odd moment to witness a Democrat elected on the promise of change paying homage to the lions of the financial establishment at a moment when they least deserved it.

page 246: This story ends as it began, with the greedy bankers and the politicians who loved them. And among those poilticians of varied party and background were a movie-actor turned president, a patrician father and son team who each occupied the White House, an Arkansas poor boy who catered to the rich as if he were one of them, and the first nonwhite president who sadly enough proved to be not all that different in terms of whose interests he served. .... The dispiriting lesson of both the Clinton and the Obama White Houses is that the Democrats proved to be as eager to please Wall Street as their Republican rivals. The influence of big corporate money far overwhelms that of labor, environmental, consumer, or grassroots organization, making a mockey of the American ideal of self-government when it comes to reining in the antics of the largest conglomerates of wealth.

A word to my Tea Partying friends: This is a book you ought to read! It slams the same baddies you rant about -- DC and Wall Street -- but it puts 'content' in your anger. If Obama is failing, it isn't beacuse he's a rabid Socialist, however. It's because he's a rabid Reaganite. Every president from Reagan to Obama has cooperated with Big Finance in deregulating the economy in keeping with the radical capitalist ideology of the "self-regulating market". Every president from Reagan to Obama has surrounded himself with economic advisors who are complicit with Big Finance, a self-nominating Old Boys's Club who come and go through a revolving door between government and Wall Street, of whom the most culpable include Paulson, Rubin, Summers, Geithner, Greenspan! and the demonic duo of Phil and Wendy Gramm. The most heinous acts of the coterie of 'bagmen' known as Congress have been the repeal of the New Deal era Glass-Steagall Act, replacing it with the disastrous Financial Services Modernization Act and the despicable grab called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, both Republican measures but the former promoted and signed by Democrat Clinton. The dramatic moments in this sordid narrative come with the Enron scandal, the cynically tolerated failure of Lehman Brothers, the hypertrophy of Citigroup, the bizarre fate of Fannie Mae, and the hated bailouts. If this reportage were a Gothic Horror novel, it would outsell every book from Frankenstein to Cujo.

The problem you see, my 'conservative' friends, is that you also seem to be gulled by the same economic pundits as our last five presidents in a row! It's not the size of the federal bureaucracy that's the root of all evil; it's the way it operates! The "deregulation" preached by the Chicago School economists and embraced by Wall Street has succeeded. Yes, succeeded! in transferring a huge percentage of the wealth of small investors (home buyers and contributors to pension funds are in fact investors) into the coffers of the wealthiest few, the top 1% of plutocrats who govern this country. Wealth doesn't 'trickle down'; it gets sucked up. The 'free market' isn't 'free'; it's costly, for most of us. And it isn't what the ideologues have smugly proclaimed for their own benefit; it isn't "self-regulating". The only self-regulating mechanism in human affairs is body temperature. Want a quick lesson, based on history, about how to make this economic stagnation longer and the next one worse? Easy! Dismantle all economic and environmental regulations; plug the welfare leaks that allow wealth to trickle down to the percentage of American who aren't well-to-do; bust the unions; and vote against your own self-interest for the radical ideologues who promise to repeal Darwin's Rule of Evolution.

The following was deleted by Amazon from a review of a nonsensical book by Thomas E. Woods, an employee of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
THE PARABLE OF THE LIBERTARIAN SHEEP

Feelings of distrust and resentment against The Shepherd and his dog Regulus were running high in the Flock one warm spring day in Austria. "We've been shorn too often and too close," murmured one stout ram, "and I'm sick of being nicked whenever The Shepherd is pressed to hurry!"
"Yes," said a plump ewe, "and that nasty Regulus is always nipping at us and driving us out of the greenest pastures, those on the steep slopes where one gets the sweetest views of the picturesque chasms."
"That's scarcely the worst of matters," bleated the shaggiest ram of the flock; "I've been watched The Shepherd intently for many years and I'm certain now ... "
"Certain of what?" baahed the flock in unison.
"Certain that the 'disappearances' are The Shepherd's work!"
"How so?" snorted the ewe.
"The Shepherd is slaying and flaying us one at a time, and devouring our flesh," said the shaggy ram, "and tossing our bones to his dog!"
"Then it's clear that we need to eliminate The Shepherd and his dog Regulus," bellowed the bellwether of the flock. "Let's wait until they're napping after lunch and then trample them to dirt, and then we can browse freely to our stomachs' content."
"But wait," bleated the sole black sheep of the flock, "don't The Shepherd and Regulus protect us from the wolves?"
"Nonsense," rumbled the bellwether, "We can better protect ourselves, especially when our wool is allowed to grow thick without constant shearing. Besides, everyone knows that the pasture is self-regulating."
"Best of all," added the fattest ewe of the flock, "if we're able to graze without restriction, surely some of us will wax larger and stronger until we become wolves ourselves!"

So the Flock indeed trampled The Shepherd and his Dog, and the rest of this parable can be read in "The Great American Stickup" by Robert Scheer.