The #1 reason for economic regulation

is that it allows the honest businessman to thrive.  Regulatory failure means one thing--the crooks have taken over.

Inside The Fed's Secret War On Good Regulation

William Black | Jan. 11, 2010, 4:16 PM

The first decade of this century proved how essential effective regulators are to prevent economic catastrophe and epidemics of fraud. The most severe failure was at the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s failure was the most harmful because it had unique authority to prevent the fraud epidemic and the resulting economic crisis. The Fed refused to exercise that authority despite knowing of the fraud epidemic and potential for crisis.

The Fed’s failures were legion, but five are worthy of particular note.

1. Greenspan believed that the Fed should not regulate v. fraud

2. Bernanke believed that the Fed should rely on self-regulation by “the market”

3. (Former) Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Geithner testified that he had never been a regulator (a true statement, but not one he’s supposed to admit)

4. Bernanke gave the key support to the Chamber of Commerce’s effort to gimmick bank accounting rules to cover up their massive losses — allowing them to report fictional profits and “earn” tens of billions of dollars of bonuses

5. Bernanke recently appointed Dr. Patrick Parkinson as the Fed’s top supervisor. He is an economist that has never examined or supervised. He is known for claiming that credit default swaps(CDS, a.k.a the financial derivatives that destroyed AIG) should be unregulated because fraud was impossible among sophisticated parties. more