Financial Funnies

“What you gotta understand is that we got a regulatory issue here. We gotta regulate that or we’re gonna get more bubbles. Gonna get bigger, larger, then pop, money goes to the weasels,” advises a “Daddy Bush” impersonator on popular comedy website funnyordie.com, in a terse summary of the “whole shebang” of financial reform. If only financial reform were really funny, sighs The Washington Post’s commentator Katrina vanden Heuvel. She says such reforms shouldn’t be seen as a luxury after devastating financial crisis and that it should not be a partisan issue: “Everyone from the tea partiers to Volvo-driving liberals has a stake in shutting down the casino and getting the big banks under control. Of possible reforms, creating an independent agency to protect consumers from financial abuse should be one of the easier lifts. The problems are obvious. Consumers are battered routinely by predatory mortgage brokers, shifty credit card companies and rapacious pay-day lenders with exorbitant fees. We’ve seen that these practices can bring down the global economy, not just the vulnerable consumer. And the utter failure of the Federal Reserve and other regulators to use their powers to police the banks has amply demonstrated the need for an independent cop on the beat.”