With lingering unemployment, massive Wall Street bonuses, and an angry electorate, the Administration is devising new "reforms." The list includes taxing big banks, limiting bonuses, paying bankers in stock, prohibiting commercial banks from proprietary trading as well as running hedge and private equity funds, limiting leverage, establishing a systemic risk overseer, and forcing investment-banks to preplan their funerals.
Let's get real. Bonuses will be called salary, taxes will be shifted to the public, bankers will hedge stock losses, proprietary trading will become "client service," banks will invest indirectly in proscribed funds, leverage limits will induce riskier investing, and regulators will keep working for their next bosses - the ones on Wall Street.
And the problem was not how fast financial behemoths were interred or resurrected. It's what killed them. Their actual or near-death experiences showed us that our financial middlemen aren't to be trusted. And the specter of their demise flipped economic expectations. Suddenly, households and firms expected bad times and acted individually to ensure that collective outcome.
So let's consider an alternative financial system, which is remarkably simple to implement. It's called Limited Purpose Banking because it limits banks, insurers, and all other financial corporations to one job and one job only - financial intermediation. It also calls for a single regulatory body that will independently verify, rate, disclose, and custody financial securities.
In my just released book, Jimmy Stewart Is Dead, I discuss the interconnected financial, regulatory, and political malfeasance that infests our financial system and show, from an economists' perspective, that our current financial status quo is extremely risky. I also discuss Limited Purpose Banking.
This proposal was referenced three times by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King in recent testimony to Parliament. And the book/plan has been very strongly endorsed by Jeff Sachs, George Shutz, Bill Bradley, Robert Reich, five Nobel laureates in economics (Akerlof, Lucas, Prescott, Fogel, and Phelps), Simon Johnson, Niall Ferguson, Kevin Hasset, Ken Rogoff, Jagdish Bagwati, and many other prominent economists and policy makers.
Limited Purpose Banking would put a definitive end to financial failures, and its implementation would flip the economy from its depressed state to a healthy, confident position.
Senator Dodd's "friend of Anthony" reform is not the answer. It does nothing to address the fundamental problem of the crisis -- financial fraud -- left, right, and center. This problem can't be addressed by hiring more Keystone Cops or adding super regulators. We already have over 115 regulatory bodies who can't shoot straight. We need a system that is fool proof, check that, fraudster-proof. That's Limited Purpose Banking. It recognizes that Jimmy Stewart - the trustworthy banker in It's a Wonderful Life is dead and that we can't pretend that the folks at the top in Wall Street have our best interests at heart. They don't. So we need a system that make Wall Street safe for Main Street. And we need to implement that new system not tomorrow, but today.
Laurence Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University, President of Economic Security Planning, Inc. (see www.esplanner.com), and the author of Jimmy Stewart is Dead: Ending the World's Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.
I think if I put my money in this old sock(exhibit A), there's no real way that any banker can get their grubby little fingers on it. I might not earn any interest, but I'm really not interested in recieving interest. Or paying it.
Obama failed America when he chose to do their bidding and serve them rather than the American people...
Right now we're trying to stimulate the economy but cannot use the banks...incredible...
We learned nothing fro the huge failure of Greenspan and Rubin and Summers...they were a disaster for America and Obama put them in charge...
If this were basketball would Obama leave in someone giving the other side foul shot after foul shot or who was sinking shots in the wrong basket...?
Well that's what he did with America's economy...
"The High Crime of Bribery."
These financial crimes would not be a problem if the laws of the land were being enforced (AND if they had not been rewritten and/or repealed).
There is obvious, indisputable empirical evidence that every Member of Congress (and quite likely, "all civil officers" who matter) are taking Bribes to the tune of more than $1 million per person per day. And, that they have been doing so for many years.
In contrast to this: Article 2, Section 4. Thirty-one words.
The words "corporation," "campaign," "contribution," and "lobbying" do not appear anywhere in this tiny handwritten sheet of Wisdom.
The word, "bribery," sits there un-adorned, side by side with "treason." The Founders well knew that no one needed to be told what those words meant. They also knew that, for egregious crimes like these, there are no "loopholes."
Eventually, the 308.9 million of "us" will recognize that a group of less than five hundred of "them" has been taking us all to the ... grave. And we will begin once again to "love our country" enough to do what it takes to save it. Drive the moneychangers from the temple. Lay not a hand on them! Make not a single threat! But make it impossible for them to remain where they are. Make them flee. Good riddance.
Sometimes I think the answer lies in the disconnect between GDP and the BLS income data -- transactions that float through the economy but never deliver to anyone in it -- a game perhaps devised by Wall Street to help make the U.S. look good, and the trap of fear of what would happen if it was stopped.
Sometimes I think it might be that the filthy rich -- those to whom we seem to look as the source of last resort to build an economy that is good for all of us -- would fade away along with the elimination of exploitation of the financial infrastructure. Not that they provide the jobs or anything else of value, not even that they bribe anyone, just maybe that there is a solemn recognition that we have failed in every arena to produce sufficient wealth to propel ourselves forward, except for this distasteful funny business.
That's my pondering on a bad day. On a good day, I demand the solid financial system we deserve, and I'm more than willing to slice the gamesmen out of the picture and take my chances with the other 99%. But it still might be a good idea to raise their taxes before we change the rules on them.
The first thing I'll say is that progressives ignore the truly powerful structural change to the financial system proposed in this blogpost at they and their grandchidren's peril.
While heralded as the proposal to "narrow" the structure of individual financial service components, it is capable of being a platform for much greater reforms in the future.
But, most importantly, this type of "banking" system is almost immediately capable of restoring stability to the overwrought and unsustainable system that has evolved under deregulation from Carter to Obama.
The most serious problem that progressives have, economically-speaking, is the failure to understand the nature of money and banking, a pre-requisite for true economic democracy.
This has resulted in generations of hand-wringing over budgetary priorities and fiscal proprieties.
"Narrow" banking immediately restores the full spectrum of protections from inter-sector risk, such as that from the shadow bankers bringing down the depositary institutions where we all have accounts. FDIC can cease to be, if done properly.
If coupled with a move to full-reserve banking for the demand-deposit sector, and comprehensive restrictions on financial leveraging on the investment/savings banking sector, we can be assured of a restoration of long-term stability to both the banking and economic system.
Listen up, progressives, this is a mountain more than anyone has put forward up on the hill.
THIS is where we should be.
The Money System Common
www.economicstability.org
However, I disagree with their proposed solutions.
I eagerly await the day that we recognize that this private, fractional-reserve banking system is a farce and begin to discuss the alternative way of looking at the money system.
Those at the misesblog have been advocating for the Hayek-Rothbard solution and we of the progressive view also think we have a better options.
Dr. Kotlikoff's proposal includes one element that most libertarians support - that of full-reserve banking for demand deposits, also one of the hallmarks of the Chicago Plan for Monetary Reform.
Let's get to the point where the past road is behind us and discuss what might lie ahead as the road ahead has two paths.
www.economicstability.org