Homeowner's Blog

Go Bravely Forward

President Obama and Congressional Democrats are headed for a fight with the GOP and  Wall Street over financial services regulatory reform. The results of the financial meltdown have been disastrous, and clearly strong regulation is needed to prevent similar irresponsible actions by financial services executives. At the same time it is also possible to go too far, and some types of regulation could indeed hurt the economy more than they could contribute to preventing another meltdown.

Opinions on the latter vary greatly, and those opinions are mainly conjecture no matter which side they fall on. In the opinion of the financial services sector, all substantial regulatory changes are risky. If we heed their opinion, there will very little protection against another meltdown in the future. We've seen the results of the meltdown, and we would rather risk over-regulation than leave ourselves exposed to another financial meltdown. Besides, any regulatory excess will soon be corrected anyway. We can trust the financial services sector to get right to work on correcting any such excesses, even before President Obama signs the bill! That would be a productive use of their time and money. For that matter, even if the bill was virtually toothless, we can also count on the financial services sector to get right to work on watering it down further before President Obama signs the bill. Better that they productively spend their time and money bringing the measure back to neutral rather than gutting a weak bill entirely. At least that way we'll buy ourselves a couple extra years before the next meltdown.


Continue reading Go Bravely Forward.