Quote of the Week

Comes from Neil Barofsky (pictured), former Inspector General for the TARP program, from a New York Times article.

"The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true," Mr. Barofsky said in an interview last week. "It really happened. These suspicions are valid."

The regulators at the SEC and Treasury are in on this scam, and Democrats and Republicans alike are guilty. Democrats however, committed the latest foul with their passage of Dodd-Frank, which perpetuates Too Big To Fail. (Peter, a friend of mine noted that any justification of monopoly on a basis other than consumer choice, like TBTF, is ripe for collapse.) But none of these bank shenanigans would be sustainable without a compliant Federal Reserve, manipulating the currency to keep Wall Street and the Big Banks afloat. This is why I have been converted to a gold standard enthusiast. The gold standard carries its own problems, but at least it prevents the kind of currency manipulation that leads to the financial crises that continue to plague the industrialized world.

H/T Dean. Also, I have at times castigated the NYT for its reporting, but bringing these issues to light is what a free press is all about.

I can't resist one more quote.

“So much of what’s wrong with Dodd-Frank is it trusts the regulators to be completely immune to the corrupting influences of the banks,” he said in the interview. “That’s so unrealistic. Congress has to take a meat cleaver to these banks and not trust regulators to do the job with a scalpel.”