Phil Trupp

Caroline Baum: Obama's Regulatory Campaign Is Disastrous

The bonfires of stupidity and greed of past eight years has nearly destroyed the world economy. Little wonder then that government seeks stabilization at any and every level of the financial system. There will be grasping at straws and many missteps in the panicky attempts to reconstruct the broken economy.

Meanwhile, Angry Banker (above) fears what he calls "populist politicians," presumably those now in the majority in Washington. But in the broader sense all politicians are populists stroking their constituencies in order to be reelected. Angry Banker is probably among the so-called "special interest populists" such as former SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, whose mission it was to destroy the minimal regulatory powers of the commission he headed. Henry Paulson, at Treasury, was another special interest populist, crippling the competitors of Goldman Sachs where Paulson's core constituency may be found. Present SEC chairperson Mary Schapiro served the interests of the banks which funded her last position as head of FINRA. Ms. Schapiro dumped millions of dollars of auction rate securities off FINRA's books shortly before the ARS market collapsed, leaving investors holding $336 billion in illiquid assets.

Populist politicians are standard issue, and this applies as well to political appointees. They are, all of them, taking care of their own. The rest of us are invisible.