A few weeks ago Dodd's Senate banking committee held hearings on the need for regulation of the financial industry. Present were 10 regulators each from one of 10 different regulatory bodies. Dodd commented: "the picture of 10 people was the picture of the problem."

So it seems that we have too many regulators, none of whom were able to individually or collectively deal with the recent financial debacle. Now lawmakers are trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. Obviously there will be fierce power struggles among the existing agencies. Hal Scott, professor at Harvard University said: "its grown topsy turvy since the civil war driven by a reaction of events -- the turf was where industry always wants its own regulator that they can be more comfortable with."

Continue reading Politicians and bank regulators will battle over turf and powers

Politicians and bank regulators will battle over turf and powers originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 29 May 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Former Federal Reserve chair and current presidential adviser Paul Volcker says that the global economy may be deteriorating even more precipitously than it did during the Great Depression.

"I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world," he said at a Columbia University luncheon. He also dismissed the notion that the financial innovation of the past decade has had any positive results: "There is little correlation between sophistication of a banking system and productivity growth."

Continue reading Volcker says this could be worse than the Great Depression

Volcker says this could be worse than the Great Depression originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A survey of 800 registered voters conducted by Public Strategies found that 63% of Americans are "much more concerned" with the debate on executive compensation than they were a year ago and 33% are "somewhat more concerned."

Some 80% have an unfavorable opinion of the chief executives of big banks. What's amazing to me is that 20% don't! 89% want to see some sort of clawback provision to allow companies to recoup funds paid to executives whose firms later collapsed.

This would seem to provide Congress with all the mandate it needs to implement very stringent pay controls on the companies participating in the bailout. If the taxpayers are being asked to provide more than $700 billion to the banks and they want executive pay controls to be part of that, then what's the question? Any bank that doesn't need the money that badly is free to reject it. It's a win-win!

Any rational argument against imposing restrictions on executive pay went out the window when the bailout bill was passed.

All of a sudden, people care about executive pay originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Who's afraid of coordinated central banks?

Who's afraid of coordinated central banks? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.