>>>Yes, it is depressing. Financial reform is clearly needed and the powers that be are still managing to fight it off.
>>>
>>>Antitrust enforcement tends to go in cycles and is rebounding a bit now after the Bush years. Their motto may as well have been Greed Is Good.
>>
>>You speak as if it wasn't.
>>
>>First of all, I think they should invent money. Not this Mickey Mouse dollar that's emitted in unknown quantities by anything called a bank. And the banks shouldn't ever be allowed to lend more than 60% of what they actually have (not what they have borrowed, not what they have in imaginary funny papers and goodwill category), and the stock market should not ever make anyone rich by ruining a business. Anyone who makes money by destroying something should be banned from ever touching a security, and all the gains returned to the destroyed business.
>
>It looks like some small part of that is going to happen, starting with new rules (actually old rules reenacted) preventing them from over-leveraging themselves. Of course they are fighting it tooth and nail but there are serious efforts afoot to decouple traditional banking from investment operations. AIG never would have been in the soup if not for a wacko group in London playing around with exotic investments.

Have you lost your mind? Putting the blame or even a portion of it outside the U.S.????? :o)