Speaking Truth To Power

Sheila Bair in testimony before Congress as those bloviating bags of flatus once again point fingers and try to close a barn door after the horse has gone.

While I fully support the goal of having an informed, forward looking, proactive and analytically capable regulatory community, looking back, if we are honest in our assessment, it is clear that U.S. regulators already had many broad powers to supervise financial institutions and markets and to limit many of the activities that undermined our financial system. For various reasons, these powers were not used effectively and as a consequence supervision was not sufficiently proactive.

Failure by regulators to use the powers they already have is a big reason the problems we have are so big. Relations between Wall St. and the regulators is far too cozy as people move back and forth between government and private employment.