¿"Kook-aid"?

Thought-free political posturing If this is what counts as economic and regulatory analysis, Warren is a blithering idiot: “We need to stop the cycle of bankers taking on risky activities, getting bailed out by the taxpayers, then using their army of lobbyists to water down regulations,” Warren said. “We need a tough cop on the beat so that no one steals your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street.” I haven’t heard such blatantly political red meat since, since….Ted Kennedy. It’s a Mix Master of logic:  (1) Banks are IN THE BUSINESS to take risks. Like writing commercial and residential real estate loans. Like providing businesses with credit. Like facilitating complex global financial transactions. Like making a market in various equities, fixed-income securities, and commercial paper. It’s all risky. And there is little way to regulate it all (see: Bernie Madoff.) Dodd-Frank/the Volker Rule are unworkable, unmeasurable, and unverifiable. And now unaccountable, too (see: CFPB.) APPL lost billions in shareholder value recently. Where’s the outrage? (2) It’s the government (Treasury and the Fed) that uses taxpayer money to bail out the banks, like insuring deposit accounts up to $250,000, so someone need to regulate government’s slush fund. It’s like the bartender yelling at an alcoholic to quit drinking. (3) Lobbying is a political, Congressional creation, regulated by them, too. Stop telling us we need more regulation but fewer lobbyists because regulation CREATES lobbyist. Progressive proposal: 100% regulation, 0% lobbyists? Result: North Korea. Someone needs to reintroduce moral hazard to the marketplace. The world of finance and banking is too complicated to fine tune to the satisfaction of progressives like Warren; She (_sic_) couldn’t do it if she had an office next to Dimon’s. She’d ban scissor if she could so kids would never again run with them in hand. Make it simple. Want to underwrite and hold complicated derivatives too complicate to value and market to market? Go ahead. Knock yourself out but you can’t use the FDIC or FSLIC to insure deposit accounts. Message to banks, shareholders and depositors, you’re on your own. I’d quickly think twice about keeping uninsured checking at B of A (I may move it anyway to avoid the fees.) bostonshepherd @ Mon 14 May 11:11 AM

You’ve drank the banking kook-aid, good for you... (( fold here ))  .. that doesn’t make the rest of us complicit. " (1) Banks are IN THE BUSINESS to take risks. Like writing commercial and residential real estate loans. Like providing businesses with credit. Like facilitating complex global financial transactions. Like making a market in various equities, fixed-income securities, and commercial paper. It’s all risky." Banks are in the business of UNDERSTANDING risk. This is clearly different that a knee-jerk willingnes to simply take risks. This understanding they then use to make decisions. What is clear, besides your lack of clarity on the issue, is that banks have been thoroughly incompetent at their core competency: UNDERSTANDING RISK. You don’t, for example, lose 2billion at a pop if you properly understand risk. "The world of finance and banking is too complicated to fine tune to the satisfaction of progressives like Warren" You’re so precious. First you simply simplify with your “Banks are IN THE BUSINESS to take risks” then you say there are complexities beyond the ken of progressives. bigot. petr @ Mon 14 May 11:21 AM Here is one kook who could do with some aid (( fold here )) But maybe not exactly that suggested. Clarabelle’s neotheory of finance capital appears to be "It’s all so complicated that you kneejerks must simply keep your filthy regulatory paws off" -- and this, despite the presence of the antonyms, is not direct contradiction. ‘Neotheory’ is arguable, perhaps. A year or so ago I finally read Comrade Arnold’s Folklore of Capitalism and found that most of the pious selfservative baloney of the so-radiantly-Dawning-all-around-us Age of Breitbartius was available in 1937, rather more eloquently expressed. Grade Inflation has much to answer for. As to the philosophical Form of Bologna, no problem: everything one lusts to do (say, keep St. Elizabeth of H*rv*rdy out of othervolks’ private boardrooms and suchlike private game preserves) is [1] Simple. Everything one would prefer left undone is dauntin’ly Complicated. Q. E. D. If Clarabelle had left it at that, his position would be inexpugnable, it seems to me. As things stand, though, there is a chink in the panoply. We are informed that "Banks are in the business of [taking] risk," a proposition that is neither Simple nor Complicated (as just neodefined to accommodate the meanest intelligence), but merely mistaken. Clarabelle an’ a small reactionary coterie [*] sincerely think so, no doubt, but mostvolks never heard of it, and continue to put our money in the bank in the dotty hope that it will, somehow, be safer there than it is under the couch cushions. Happy days. ___ [*] In back of Clarabelle, I suspect we have to do here with Edward, Freelord Conard in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, distinguished practitioner of baincappin’ and penner of Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, which precious neocontribution Paddy and Eye have decided we probably ought to read before we start knocking. His freelordship comes to mind partly because he appeared on "All Points Ashbrooked," Monday 14 May 2012. Even if we had heard every word of that performance, as we did not, ’twould have been rather a skimpy foundation for proper knocking. Not too encouraging--mais nous verrons--is the fact that all the Amazonian amateurs seem to love the book but never get around to giving much of a clue what Peruna it preaches. The late Miss Rand of Petersburg’s Heroes and Sheroes of Risktakin’ can hardly fail to figure large in it. Whether his freelordship plays Clarabelle’s little shell game with ‘simple’ an’ ‘complicated’ I cannot tell from the reviews, though that seems likely enough antecdently.