The Obama administration's proposals for US financial regulation are pretty good, as far as they go. The problem is they do not go far enough.Read on.
Great care and intelligence went into the plan announced last week. It makes no stupid suggestions; recall Sarbanes-Oxley, a recent instance of unguided regulatory backlash, and you see this is no small achievement. But the plan's comprehensiveness is a bit of an illusion. It ignores many issues, and has more loose ends and suggestions for further review than actual innovations.
Also, as in other areas, the White House is unwilling to confront the political barriers to fuller reform. You can call this pragmatism, or you can call it timidity. A crisis of this order demands big new ideas, and the leadership to push them through. In finance, if not now, when?
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My new column for the FT complains that Obama's proposals for financial regulation are too thin.
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It will not happen, period. The corporations have too much power for reform of this kind to succeed. The corporations pad the pockets of all of our "lawmakers" and prevent anyone from taking any power from them. There are a lot of battles to fight and if the last month has told us anything it is that Obama is not going to fully fight them. For our ecenomy to improve we must change the regulations and prevent the thievery from continuing but I see no reason to believe it will ever happen.
If Obama can't do it now after the last year we have had, do you really think it will happen?
It is all about giving lip-service to an issue and not actually doing anything... Politics, American style.