Trust the Jim and Joan Dandies to the rescue, no doubt:
...To understand the White House’s blueprint for regulating the financial markets, start with what the Bush administration did not do. It did not offer America a plan to respond to the ongoing credit crisis or to the Federal Reserve’s dramatic intervention to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns. It certainly did not provide a roadmap for avoiding this sort of meltdown in the future.
The Fed’s role in the Bear debacle has put taxpayers at risk of having to shoulder big losses, but the administration’s so-called regulatory reform does not address what the Bear mess made obvious: if something goes badly wrong in under-regulated or unregulated corners of the financial markets, it could topple the whole system.
In fact, the blueprint was mostly developed before the current financial crisis and accordingly comes across as outdated. The message of the administration’s proposals is that the markets will — and should — return to where they were before the near-collapse of Bear Stearns. It’s doubtful whether many of its suggested policies would have been apt even in that earlier context. It’s indisputable that they are inapt now.
It will be up to Congress — and the next administration — to create the necessary new rules for 21st-century financial markets. These include requirements that firms engaged in risky financial behavior maintain large amounts of high-quality capital, other limits on borrowed money and complex derivatives and incentives for bankers’ pay that hold them accountable for losses...
Yes, and beating the current fuel crisis will involve energy consortiums developing alternatives to fossil hydrocarbons that involve economically workable and environmentally sustainable solar-based energy production.
And the safety of the chickens involves getting the foxes on board and in charge of henhouse security.
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