Getting reform wrong?

When a major bank fails, in the years after the Dodd bill passes, we will face the exact same potential chaos as after the collapse of Lehman.  And we know what our policy elite will do in such a situation – because Messrs. Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, and Summers swear up and down there was no alternative, and people like them will always be in power.

Comments

[Spag]

What, no snark like in your earlier post on this topic? Maybe sitting on their hands doesn't really matter after all regarding this piece of legislation if there really is no real partisan/ideological divide.

But you can keep saying there is in order to ridicule those dumb Republicans...

[cheripickr]

Put a slightly different way, thanks Ed. That was an interesting and informative piece that does not immediately trigger a partisan reflexive tendency to either rally around or denounce you or the author of the piece, leading to a degeneration of the discussion into us-vs-them tendentious and reductive arguments, and personal invective. Rather, it encourages open-mindedness and discussion based on both the search for common ground and respect for sincerely held differences of opinion.

[Jim Caserta]

I would love if you guys started reading the baselinescenario. They are arguing for legislation that would force our largest banks to get smaller - http://baselinescenario.com/2010/03/03/dallas-fed-president-break-up-big-banks/. How much better would winding 2008-sized-Citi down with a new resolution authority be than what we had then? It would still have been a multinational effort, and so big as to be extremely difficult.

Financial reform is not a partisan political issue - some, more populist, R's support, and some, more corporatist D's, oppose. However, getting the reform passed right now is a hugely political issue with partisan issues impacting it. Republicans would be needed to defeat a potential filibuster, and having them on board asap will improve the legislation (Corker agrees with that point, and sees his non-involvement in the committee bill to be a mistake.

[Jim Caserta]

What part of Too-Big-To-Fail do you not understand

t’s as if a very clever political poisoned pill has been put into place. If you act against the big banks they will …. What exactly? Threaten to prolong the recession? Help your opponents get elected? Run ads against everything you believe in?

Whatever the reason, write it down and think about it. How do you feel about a small set of big financial firms having this kind of power? How is that good for the rest of the business community, let alone regular citizens and our democracy?

This administration is perfectly capable of taking on the big banks. All that is missing is a little clarity of thought and a fair amount of political courage. Or they can just call up Senator Kaufman.

[Bubba]

"Financial reform is not a partisan political issue - some, more populist, R's support, and some, more corporatist D's, oppose."

If financial reform was the actual goal of what is currently being passed off as "financial reform", what you've posted on this subject might be useful to know.

But it's pretty clear that, as is the case in health care "reform", the object of all this is not "reform" -- it's to institute yet another statist control mechanism over another vital segment of our economy. Any "reform" will be a by-product from achieving the desired control implementation.

In the case of the Dodd bill, it's clear that

Excerpt:

"Dodd’s bill contains a version of the Volcker rule; but as Calabria points out, the language 'is full of holes.' So are Dodd’s TBTF provisions. Back in the summer of 2008, the Connecticut Democrat explicitly characterized government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as TBTF. Yet his legislation does not address their ongoing threat to the financial system. That is a rather glaring omission......

.....Indeed, one thing seems certain: Dodd’s legislation will not pass the Senate without first undergoing major revisions."