My Desultory Blog

I don’t want to be too critical about the ‘difficult for me to understand’ banking reform legislation, but after hearing comments on a WSJ podcast (below), the politically one-sided rush to reform does leave me concerned; it sure would be nice to have bi-partisan support for a banking oversight bill. My concern: If the Fed chairman is appointed to oversee the nations banking health, yet legislators are still permitted to bypass this federal oversight and set up yet more government (a Systemic Risk Council and the like), do we just have more government bureaucrats on the payroll?  If congress can still put pressure on the banking industry to make high risk loans to their constituents, be they to businesses or individual borrowers, are we really addressing the root cause of our banking problem? I have no problem shoring up the way the Federal Reserve monitors and enforces the way big banks take risk and protect their holdings, be it through higher capital levels, giving regulators more power to close loopholes and monitor derivatives contracts, but still see it critical to keep congressionally elected politicians from having additional leverage in the banking industry.

Posted via email from richc’s posterous