Voodoo Bankers
I find it ironic that the same banks that were vigorously bailed out from certain collapse are refusing to accept IOUs from California, a state whose treasury is also on course for certain collapse. The last seven years of banking practices has zapped some kind of voodoo in the minds of these people. Every day they appear more and more inept and unable to manage their public relations.
But what disappoints me even more is the lobbying done to prevent the enactment of what I think are essential regulations on the financial industry—regulations that I believe are in the best interest of bankers themselves. I can’t imagine any banker, financial assets manager, or stock broker being happy with the current economic situation, but it seems as if the very regulations which would prevent this from happening again are being opposed by these insane people.
Bob Herbert just wrote about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/opinion/14herbert.html
Essentially, the kind of regulation I want would be to set a modest minimum set of national requirements for taking out home mortgages. The reason the financial system got into so much trouble is that the small banks were able to bring their minimum requirements to almost nothing and sell mortgages to investment banks. This would be one of the best things that could ever happen to secure the long-term integrity of the banking system.
But I am convinced that Congress would cower before such an idea.