That said, your suggestions are workable solutions to reigning in the illgotten gains, and kleptocratic machinations of the predator class finance oligarchs.

Bravo!!!!

Exactly right. I agree. The government is actively enabling a class of kleptocratic financial sector employees.

“Elizabeth Warren wrote an op-ed for Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal that lays out the confrontation. For most of the past two decades, many Americans trusted the banking industry–not necessarily to be moral exemplars, but they trusted that the banks were basically doing what was right for customers and for the economy.”

Elizabeth Warren is WRONG. We did not trust banks to do what was best for the economy, we DID more or less think they would not bankrupt their institutions in their single minded quest for personal gain.

Nor did we think they would render themselves dependent on the Federal government, while continuing those kleptocratic practices.

Why are we enabling this?

Private banks still would exist and we can all fight about what type of regulations should be compelled, but why not a public option?

At least that would help with the whole to big to fail thing. If a public bank existed it would make it far easier to liquidate private banks in a crisis.

Competition can only be re-established during our era by creating a domestic alternative to the banking cartel. A Public Finance alternative or People’s Bank can be a co-operative model with a central government guarantee. Call it a nationalized central banking system if you will, but it is high time that an Domestic Monetary Fund (inversion of the IMF) and a National Public Finance Bank (domestic version of the World Bank) be placed on the table. I think people have been suckered into the rhetoric and fear mongering of cold war and class protectionism for too long now. Let’s start talking “public” market instead of Privitized and recipient “consumer” patronage.

Of course there is. End the government guarantees! Then smaller, healthy banks will be able to compete and the big zombies living off taxpayer money will finally die.

End the government-chartered ratings agency oligopoly so that the agencies are accountable to investors not big business.

Adding another layer of regulation and bureaucracy first of all won’t work (banks are smarter than regulators, assuming they don’t already own them) and secondly makes us less competitive globally.

Regulate and prevent the problem in the future, but stop trying to prop up the notion that we somehow ALL deserve a 5000 sq ft house, 2.5 children, and 5 full size SUVs without actually having the real income to support it. The longer we prop that fantasy up, the longer it will be until Americans do what they need to do: scale life back to fit REALITY.

Michael wrote:

“Many in this crowd should be interested in a recent lecture E warren gave at UC, The coming collapse of the middle class.”

The video is here: