Here are a couple of articles highlighting what happens when regulation gets out of hand. It starts when some nanny shows up at the PTA meeting demanding that the new monkey bars be limited to 5 feet in height so that someones unfortunate kid won't get hurt falling from the highest bar. The kids all learn from this that success is forbidden. Later they learn that it is also punished as their financial success is taxed into non-existence. Here's a chart from
Captain Capitalism showing the trend of GDP over the years coupled with the government's take of your winnings:
Click to enlarge. Then go read his piece. He thinks this and another chart showing the potential in individual earnings had the government not been so "helpful" is worthy of an appearance on
Zero Hedge. I think so too, and I'm stealing a march on them on this one.
The
Assistant Village Idiot has a piece, complete with links to more such articles, denouncing the effects of over-regulation cheerfully pointing out that the regulation of banks is exacerbating problems in the financial community rather than fixing anything, and will likely be labeled as the proximate cause of the impending financial collapse.
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Here is a story of what happens when an average couple is up against a giant, wealthy, powerful bank, and the political climate just isn't particularly supportive of government protecting consumers.
www.alternet.org/news/155442/wells_fargo_has_blood_on_its_hands
. . .
The quick version of this terrible story is that Norman and Oriane Rousseau of Newbury Park, California were scammed into a predatory mortgage. But they made their payments anyway, always paying with a cashier’s check in person at the same branch. Then one day the bank misapplied their payment and said they still owed the money. This started a long, nasty process that led to the bank evicting the Rousseaus from their home.
Here’s the shocker: right at the start the Rousseaus came up with proof that the bank had received the payment and had cashed the check. But the bank continued to claim it had missed the payment, gave the Rousseaus the runaround, started applying fees, and used it as an excuse to foreclose on the house anyway.
The Rousseaus fought back, the bank dragged it out for so long and pulled so many tricks, getting its way every step of the process, until this last Sunday Norman Rousseau finally gave up and shot himself in despair – two days before the scheduled eviction, Tuesday, May 15.
. . .
As the second article mentions, the regulations make it harder for honest banks, and easier for the shadier ones by virtue of the additional complexity they add.
In this case, yes, it's obvious that more regulation would have straightened out the banks accounting department and clarified communications between the billing and receiving areas.
On the other hand, criminal charges against the teller accepting the first challenged payment, and the fine fellow that touted the re-financing might send might be worthwhile.
In the Navy, we were cautioned that we would be culpable, if we followed an order we knew was illegal. I didn't think civilians got immunity for violating the law. Like bullying as a business tactic of sales. Or conversion, for accepting a payment and not taking care of the details.
How about criminal negligence for the folk in charge of the foreclosure sale, in the knowledge that challenges were underway?
I don't want to see more regulation of banks. Just fewer despicable practices made legal.
Wow!
If you really believe that left to their own devices, banks (and corporations in general) would behave in a virtuous manner, being simply benevolent engines of innovation and job creation, then this blog is evidence that moon-battery is not an exclusive domain of the left wing.
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