Lost in the 21st Century

Have we really learned anything?

Interesting article from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones about the new push to relax the weak financial reform rules that passed last year…

This is a response to comments from Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan/Chase and comments from Matt Yglesias in the Financial Times:

So Dimon doesn’t like higher capital rules, doesn’t like derivatives regulation, doesn’t like debit card rules, and we already know what the entire industry thinks of the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Long story short, he doesn’t really think the financial industry needs any new regulations at all, thankyouverymuch.

Well, if I were him I suppose I wouldn’t think so either. But guess what? It’s only been two years since the Great Collapse, and finance industry profits have already rebounded to their bubble-era levels. That’s a strong sign that finance industry leverage is also returning to its bubble-era levels, which in turn means the industry is about as dangerous as it’s ever been. And Dodd-Frank is a notably weak piece of regulation, about as weak as any bill could be and still be called regulatory reform in the first place. Wall Street got off easy, and Dimon knows it.

AND

Years ago I remember a lot of moderate liberals talking about how the Bush era radicalized them. For me, it was the economic collapse of 2008 that did it. The financial industry almost literally came within a hair’s breadth of destroying the world, but even so it took only a few short months for them to close ranks with Republicans and the rich to prevent anything serious being done to rein them in. Profits are back up, new regulations are barely more than window dressing, nothing was done to help underwater homeowners, bonuses are as obscene as ever, unemployment remains sky high, and the public has somehow been convinced that this was all their own fault — or perhaps the fault of big government, or big deficits, or something. But the finance industry has escaped almost entirely unscathed. It’s mind boggling. If this doesn’t change your view of who really runs the world, I don’t know what would.

via Wall Street and the Public | Mother Jones.