The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Editorials

October 29, 2009

Our View: Financial regulation ideas defy logic

Congress and the Obama administration continue to spend a great deal of time trying to come up with a way to regulate the financial services industry and irregular investment instruments that caused last fall’s financial disaster.

Lawmakers and regulators and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner continued to be at odds over some of the new regulations moving through Congress as part of an enormous regulatory overhaul bill.

Clearly, regulating trillions of dollars of transactions in financial markets and the mega corporations involved in them is a daunting task, but one wonders if a little Main Street banker logic is needed. Such an investment in common sense might strengthen our grasp over the needlessly complex system we have created.

Much of the debate continues to be a turf battle. Geithner, according to critics, is trying to put more control of the regulatory system in the hands of the administration and Federal Reserve, neither of which have to answer much to Congress. The administration proposal aims to set up a Financial Services Oversight Council that would include members from major regulatory agencies in banking, securities and other industries. Geithner would be the chairman.

The problem last year wasn’t that we didn’t have people in charge of oversight, it’s mainly that we didn’t have enough people doing oversight or the ones who were there weren’t doing their job. While cooperation and consultation among agencies is advisable and should be required, setting up an entire new council, or bureaucracy, seems to be doing surgery with a sledgehammer.

Main Street logic might suggest the administration and Congress ramp up their own oversight of these agencies, fund more lawyers and auditors if they’re needed, and give them the tools to do their job. If they don’t do it, hold them accountable and/or find someone who will do the job.

Other critics reviewing the proposal in the House Financial Services Committee this week worried that the proposed creation of a “bailout fund,” paid for by insurance premiums on financial service companies, would end up being a permanent TARP bailout program.

The administration argued that the banks be charged to help government bail out one of their failing competitors after the fact. Others argued a fund should be established before another company too big too fail does so.

Whatever happened to letting companies fail? If we think they’re too big to fail, enforce anti-trust laws and break them up. Common sense, people, common sense.

There remain other disagreements such as which agency should be in charge of regulated things average people can’t understand like credit default swaps. If we can’t figure out who should regulate them, maybe we should outlaw them. Then we don’t even need much enforcement.

Average Americans know the reasons our financial system collapsed last year. We didn’t regulate the mammoth institutions like we were supposed to and we didn’t realize how much power they had. Now we know. Let’s get on with it, folks, and let’s make it simple.

Enforce current laws and outlaw things that benefit a few special interests but are a ticking time bomb to the average person’s 401(k).

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