James48843
10-22-2012, 08:13 AM
New article over on Time Magazine today:
How Wall Street Rigs the Game
The truth is that the problem has not been fixed. Did you know that four years after the crisis, and more than two years after the passage of “landmark financial reform,” that less than one third of the new laws have been implemented, and more than three quarters of the required deadlines have been missed by the regulators? Did you know that the Wall Street lobby has spent more than $300 million trying to kill — or insert loopholes into — key rules that would ensure greater transparency in derivatives and that would forbid banks from betting against their own customers? Did you know that the nation’s five largest banks are even bigger than they were before the financial meltdown? Unfortunately, the politicians and regulators are buckling.
There is a leaking dam; and so far what lawmakers and regulators have done is put a Band-Aid over it.
Who gets hurt when the revolving door between Washington (http://topics.time.com/washington/) and Wall Street starts turning and both the former Chairman of the SEC, Arthur Levitt, and Jake Siewert, former aide to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, go work for Goldman Sachs? Or when Governor Tim Pawlenty (http://topics.time.com/tim-pawlenty/) leaves politics to go head up the most powerful Wall Street lobby in the country? Or when big banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are overwhelmingly funding the campaigns of the very people that are supposed to be making laws to regulate them? The answer is that you get hurt, because your lawmakers get influenced, their objectivity gets compromised, and they loose their ability to ask the hard questions and fix the problem. Witness the recent case of JP Morgan losing $6 billion on reckless trades, claiming it was a “hedge,” and allowing the executives who ran the group to leave with millions of dollars worth of golden parachutes.
Sickening.
More at Viewpoint: How Wall Street Rigs the Game | TIME.com (http://business.time.com/2012/10/22/viewpoint-how-wall-street-rigs-the-game/#ixzz2A27PoQ7k)
How Wall Street Rigs the Game
The truth is that the problem has not been fixed. Did you know that four years after the crisis, and more than two years after the passage of “landmark financial reform,” that less than one third of the new laws have been implemented, and more than three quarters of the required deadlines have been missed by the regulators? Did you know that the Wall Street lobby has spent more than $300 million trying to kill — or insert loopholes into — key rules that would ensure greater transparency in derivatives and that would forbid banks from betting against their own customers? Did you know that the nation’s five largest banks are even bigger than they were before the financial meltdown? Unfortunately, the politicians and regulators are buckling.
There is a leaking dam; and so far what lawmakers and regulators have done is put a Band-Aid over it.
Who gets hurt when the revolving door between Washington (http://topics.time.com/washington/) and Wall Street starts turning and both the former Chairman of the SEC, Arthur Levitt, and Jake Siewert, former aide to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, go work for Goldman Sachs? Or when Governor Tim Pawlenty (http://topics.time.com/tim-pawlenty/) leaves politics to go head up the most powerful Wall Street lobby in the country? Or when big banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are overwhelmingly funding the campaigns of the very people that are supposed to be making laws to regulate them? The answer is that you get hurt, because your lawmakers get influenced, their objectivity gets compromised, and they loose their ability to ask the hard questions and fix the problem. Witness the recent case of JP Morgan losing $6 billion on reckless trades, claiming it was a “hedge,” and allowing the executives who ran the group to leave with millions of dollars worth of golden parachutes.
Sickening.
More at Viewpoint: How Wall Street Rigs the Game | TIME.com (http://business.time.com/2012/10/22/viewpoint-how-wall-street-rigs-the-game/#ixzz2A27PoQ7k)