Oversight

I'm no economist. But it seems sort of intuitive that, since the last two experiments with deregulation and interfering with investigations of banks led to disaster (the S and L crisis, under the first Bush, and, although it seems to have fallen from the collective memory, the current crisis under the second one), new regulations must be in order.

It's interesting to me that immediately following the revelation (hardly a surprise) that Obama wants to impose new regulations (and I admit I have no idea what, exactly, they'd be, how well-constructed, or whether they'd get through this -- or any -- Congress), the Dow tanked. The Dow, which, as a result of previous "policy," was, not long enough ago for most people (other than those with teabags on the brain) to have forgotten, was at 6000. Yet attempts to enact reforms aimed at preventing another cataclysmic fall are seen as a bad thing. By investors, of all people.

I will say this, however: I wish President Obama had, in his speech, laid off the populist crap. It seems to me an outline of the causes of the fall in relation to lack of regulation would have been enough to make the deal. Nor do I think bonuses are much a part of the big picture. They're obscene all right, especially when it's in the bailed-out banks. But harping on fat-cats is too much like the sort of politician I thought Obama was not. There's a case to be made. It doesn't need to be in the rabble-rousing mode. It's a little too Foxobeckian for my taste.

[Addendum, a while later: Right on cue, the Republicans resort to the usual. Not a little ironic, of course, given the "us versus them" Palin rhetoric, and the anti-"elitism" (whatever that is) core of their entire presidential campaign.]

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