banks

Wall Street Journal: "Infrastructure Likely Part of Obama Jobs Push"

Peter Wallison: "Government Sues Banks for Helping GSEs Meet Government Quotas"

Daniel Foster: "Tea Party Zombies Must Die"

Nafplio, Greece

It’s afternoon and the Greeks are having one of their lately quite regular national strikes. From behind the register at his parents’ souvenir shop, Vassili Thomas is assigning blame for the country’s economic problems.

"It was not so much deregulation that caused the crisis," Niall Ferguson wrote in his 2009 report "Too Big To Live," "as excessive concentration, combined with regulatory capture or regulatory arbitrage as the big banks schmoozed their supposed supervisors or shopped around for the softest touch."

More than a year after the global financial system stood on the edge of collapse, what has been done to break apart the major banks? Who is following Paul Volcker's recent recommendations in the New York Times? Financial regulatory reform is at an impasse; Barney Frank's legislation passed the House on a party-line vote in December; in the Senate, Chris Dodd hit a roadblock in negotiations with Richard Shelby, and is now trying to negotiate a bipartisan agreement with Bob Corker instead. Even if Dodd and Corker's bill passes in committee, however, there is no guarantee it will pass the Senate -- Harry Reid could always decide to replace it with his own legislation!

Paul Krugman is, I think, right to be amazed by Obama's embrace of the $17 million bonus given to JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon and the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

A new Gallup poll shos 57 percent of Americans worry about too much government regulation of business, as opposed to 37 percent who worry about too little. When asked if they'd prefer less or more government regulation of business, Americans want less at a margin of 50-24 percent.