Washington has been caught sleeping on the job, not once, but twice.
The financial market meltdown, and 9/11. After 9/11, rather than target the known problem areas, the solution was to treat every citizen as a potential enemy of the state, spy on everyone, curtail liberties, intensively monitor the movement of all individuals, including all law abiding citizens.
After the market meltdown, the solution appears to be moving in exactly the same direction - rather than target the problem areas, let's just treat everyone like criminals and take their liberties away (because the big end of town stuffed it up, let's not put the focus where it needs to go, let's just make everyone pay and treat everyone like a criminal, while conveniently forgetting who it was that bailed out the big boys' asses).
From an organizational perspective, this is very typical of the over-kill over-reaction response that occurs when an entity realizes they messed something up. The pendulum swings too hard in the opposite direction, i.e. let's regulate the crap out of everything because we didn't have enough regs to prevent the CDS mess, so hey, truckoads of reg's that target every last market participant are the answer. Not.
The great irony in it all, is that they've put the guy who presided over the exemption of CDS' in charge of fixing up the mess he created. Of course he's going to over-react. He doesn't approach the issues from an impartial even-handed basis - he's too close to the problem that his own hand generated, both for the market and for himself personally.
One would hope that some modicum of common sense will prevail, but it is difficult to see how that is going to happen, given Gensler's lack of understanding of the OTC markets and his belief in his own omniscience. You can't have an open dialogue that facilitates learning and knowledge sharing for all parties when the person with all the power in the discussion already believes they know it all (when it's so clearly on the public record for all to see that Gensler doesn't understand how the OTC market operates or what the problem areas really are).
Pirrong on Gensler....
"And how does Gensler explain the fact that end-users have voted with their checkbooks to trade OTC even when exchange traded alternatives are available? Does he know their businesses better than they do?
To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, Gensler and the rest of the DC crowd seem to be financial Puritans, haunted by the fear that somewhere, in the darkest recesses of the OTC market, consenting adults may be happy, making mutually beneficial deals."
The financial market meltdown, and 9/11. After 9/11, rather than target the known problem areas, the solution was to treat every citizen as a potential enemy of the state, spy on everyone, curtail liberties, intensively monitor the movement of all individuals, including all law abiding citizens.
After the market meltdown, the solution appears to be moving in exactly the same direction - rather than target the problem areas, let's just treat everyone like criminals and take their liberties away (because the big end of town stuffed it up, let's not put the focus where it needs to go, let's just make everyone pay and treat everyone like a criminal, while conveniently forgetting who it was that bailed out the big boys' asses).
From an organizational perspective, this is very typical of the over-kill over-reaction response that occurs when an entity realizes they messed something up. The pendulum swings too hard in the opposite direction, i.e. let's regulate the crap out of everything because we didn't have enough regs to prevent the CDS mess, so hey, truckoads of reg's that target every last market participant are the answer. Not.
The great irony in it all, is that they've put the guy who presided over the exemption of CDS' in charge of fixing up the mess he created. Of course he's going to over-react. He doesn't approach the issues from an impartial even-handed basis - he's too close to the problem that his own hand generated, both for the market and for himself personally.
One would hope that some modicum of common sense will prevail, but it is difficult to see how that is going to happen, given Gensler's lack of understanding of the OTC markets and his belief in his own omniscience. You can't have an open dialogue that facilitates learning and knowledge sharing for all parties when the person with all the power in the discussion already believes they know it all (when it's so clearly on the public record for all to see that Gensler doesn't understand how the OTC market operates or what the problem areas really are).
Pirrong on Gensler....
"And how does Gensler explain the fact that end-users have voted with their checkbooks to trade OTC even when exchange traded alternatives are available? Does he know their businesses better than they do?
To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, Gensler and the rest of the DC crowd seem to be financial Puritans, haunted by the fear that somewhere, in the darkest recesses of the OTC market, consenting adults may be happy, making mutually beneficial deals."
I think they are trying to turn FOREX in to an elitist thing like the american stock exchange. 2:1 leverage and restricting trading action to three trades a week if you have under 25k. RESTRICTION and REGULATION IS DAMAGING THE FREE MARKETS SYSTEM. 
!!!!!!!!! Yeah !!!!!!!