Martin Wolf: Obama's Bank Reform Proposals Are Largely 'Unworkable, Undesirable And Irrelevant'

ft.com:

I admire Mr Volcker and strongly support his desire to develop a financial sector that supports the wider economy, rather than makes vast profits out of activities so likely to destabilise it. Equally, I agree that part of the solution is indeed structural. But these proposals are, in important respects, unworkable, undesirable and irrelevant to the task at hand. The president may indeed be desperate. But much more work is needed.

Read the whole story: ft.com

Comments

[outnow]

02:02 PM on 02/07/2010

Without addressing the problems with the shadow banking system, Obama's reforms will do not good. I have to agree with Mr. Wolf. The problem is systemic and structural and the typical Obama papering over the real problems will only make things worse.

Serious systemic problems require bold and radical reform.

Obama operates only by the consensus of Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke. He has proven that again and again.

Half-way solutions are worse then none at all. Reality is never fully appreciated by a consensus understanding. It takes audacity of more than hope and hype to confront the fundamental and systemic criminal nature of the international financial system. Obama doesn't have to true grit required as a mere consensus maker. Paul Volker is and was just another joke. Better than Big Ben maybe, but that's not saying much.

[Nuyorican21]

07:57 PM on 02/02/2010

Well yeah Mr. Wolf, it is going to be hard to redo a necessary part of regulation that has been part of our history for 70 years...but we went to the moon in one decade and beat the Nazi's and Imperial Japan in 4 years. So lets be a bit more positive.

[meemu]

08:07 AM on 01/28/2010

Well if a financial paper thinks it's bad, then it's probably a very GOOD thing for the rest of us....

[TJCole]

04:40 PM on 01/27/2010

Obama's colossal error was in Not Nationalizing these Major Corrupted Banks and Institutions....

Then we could have reformed them top to bottom addressing all of their bad practices and reformed them so they were actually a part of the Stimulus, rather than Constricting it as we see today....

Nationalize and reform these corrupted banks and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley too...

If need be break some up, but then re-privatize them....reformed fixed and no longer the usurious predatory suspect entities they are today...

[meemu]

08:08 AM on 01/28/2010

Have to agree with you

[vippy]

04:33 PM on 01/27/2010

As long as these crooks with Geithner, Summers, and CEOs are walking around I don't care what Obama says. This is downright theft and these crooks get away with it. Nothing he will say today will change my mind until those people have to pay the piper!

[MESGAIN26]

02:55 PM on 01/27/2010

just last week finicail times agree with obama to taxes banks and ceo who got to them ??? let me guess the feds

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

01:50 PM on 01/27/2010

Well, Martin Wolf is wrong on this. But hey, he can't always be right!

[peter915]

01:27 PM on 01/27/2010

[bobwalters]

12:49 PM on 01/27/2010

While I don't disagree, totally, with Mr. Wolf's principal thesis, I would argue that Mr. Volcker's proposals are at least a beginning move in the right direction. It is doubtful, however, that any specific set of proposed regulations or government oversight -- no matter which government -- will bring to heel the structural immorality that is the underpinning of the entire system of finance capital. Altogether too much of that immorality has bled over into governments themselves, are supported by equally structurally immoral military establishments, and is largely unknown or ignored by the "general publics" upon whose sovereignty such institutions are purported to rest.

While I do not consider myself to be overly cynical, it is incontrovertible fact that the "general publics" have very short attention spans, are altogether too easily enchanted by the images of celebrity projected by the visible members of the rich and ostensibly powerful, and lack both the organization and the wherewithal to hold the elites accountable for their single-minded devastation of both civil society and the global environment.