Banking Should Go Back to Being Boring

(NEWSER) - During the Great Depression, legend has it a group of Wall Street bankers went to Hollywood to see if it was worth investing in, only to be immediately repulsed by the brazen displays of wealth they saw there. Now that it's the bankers being pilloried for their excesses, writes Neal Gabler in the Boston Globe, it could be argued that the whole economic mess we're in is the result of once-stodgy Wall Street becoming Hollywoodized. More»

Krugman, Pearlstein agree: It doesn't address key problems

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama knows what caused the financial crisis, but his regulatory plan “basically punts on the question of how to keep it from happening all over again,” writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times. Obama’s plan takes the crucial step of regulating the “shadow banking” system, giving the Fed power over any systemically important institution. But it wouldn’t touch executive compensation or the ratings agencies, both of which played major roles in the crisis. More»

GOP argument against reform is upside-down, writes Paul Krugman

(NEWSER) - With financial reform on deck, Senate Republicans are busily figuring out how many "can get away with claiming that war is peace and regulating big banks is doing those big banks a favor," writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times . Alabama's Richard Shelby is portraying efforts to rein in big banks as a bailout, and John Boehner recently urged bankers to stand up to Congress and "not let those little punk staffers take advantage of you." But in this case, Krugman says, it's those "punks" who are looking out for the taxpayer. More»

Reform plans may hand regulation over to fervent deregulators

(NEWSER) - There's a lot riding on reform of the financial industry, but the administration's plans to overhaul financial regulation carries the seeds of its own destruction, writes Thomas Frank. Taking oversight away from the present confusing array of agencies and making the Federal Reserve One Big Regulator means that when the administration changes, regulation could end up in the deregulation-happy hands of someone like Alan Greenspan, Frank writes in the Wall Street Journal. More»

Proposed regulatory fixes don't actually fix much: Nocera

(NEWSER) - President Obama is hardly living up to the hype on fiscal regulatory reform, and he's not matching Franklin Roosevelt, either. When FDR reformed financial regulation, he transformed the industry, cheerfully making enemies in the process. Obama has been timid by comparison, writes Joe Nocera of the New York Times: “The Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam.” More»