Jackson50 said:
The merging of investment banks and commercial banks did not cause this crisis. Many nations operate without this distinction, and the most secure banks during this crisis have been those banks that have combined investment and commercial banking. Wanting strict oversight with no regulation is tantamount to wanting a large police force with no weapons. Regulation is simply the manipulation of the market to get a desired outcome. Oversight is the watchful eye of the powers that be. Without regulatory powers, those who provide the oversight are impotent.
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Exactly. Both are necessary.
Regulations even help the industry by telling them what is or is not appropriate, so they don't have to guess about it. Is an oversight committee going to sit down and have a talk with them anytime the industry doesn't know if what it is doing is illegal or not?
And without regulations, oversight committees really can't do anything. They have to have some kind of legal basis for taking action against an industry.
And obviously regulations are no good if no one is enforcing them either.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
