Worse than the disease

NY Post ^ | June 17, 2010 | PETER MORICI

[Scanian]

Washington in the Obama era seems bent on imposing "solutions" that not only fail to solve Americans' problems, but make us poorer in the bargain.

In a direct attack on Wall Street, the president and his ally, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), are bent on imposing the "Volcker rule," which would prohibit banks from making speculative investments with their own funds, and on requiring banks to divest their derivatives trading desks, or at least put them in a separate subsidiary owned by a parent holding company. Five major banks -- Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley -- do 90 percent of US derivatives trading.

This may ultimately make banking less stable, while forcing a good deal of securities trading out of New York to offshore locations.

The recent credit crisis was caused by 1) banks (small and large) writing shoddy mortgages and 2) inadequately backed derivatives, called swaps, that insured the mortgage-backed securities that financed those loans.

[thethirddegree]

Obama needs to be impeached, tried for treason and shipped to Gitmo to rot with his muslim buddies.