What do the Brits Think of Our New Bank Regulations?

Most people I've spoken to - whether they were Democrats, Republicans, or Independents - were against the huge bailout that we taxpayers recently gave to the financial industry. The bailout is now, of course "water over the dam." The best we can hope for at this point is to have learned something from it and move forward as a nation. Unfortunately, however, according to our British friends and their weekly newspaper, the Telegraph, our leaders didn't learn much and we've essentially wasted another crisis.



Last week, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill into law. While it was hailed by some as the most sweeping overhaul of US financial regulation since the 1930s, many people were unimpressed. The title of the article I will quote from is "Obama signs a bill that lets banks have US over a barrel once more."

[T]he sad reality is that Dodd-Frank fails to address the fundamental problems that resulted in the sub-prime fiasco and the related damage to not just America, but also the entire global economy.

Here's what essentially happened as the Telegraph sees it:

Big Wall Street institutions...caused a global economic crisis...forced the U.S. government to pay for a massive bail-out, but then used a slice of that bail-out cash to bribe politicians with campaign donations in order to block rule changes that might prevent a repeat performance.

Maybe you feel that that is "just business as usual" for our leaders in Washington, but I expected better.