Quote of the day

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker (R-eally? Do I actually need to tell you what party he's from?), stating his well reasoned and logical opposition to why Chris Dodd's plan, to roll up the myriad of financial and banking regulatory agencies spread across different government departments into one regulatory agency, is a bad idea proposed by a bad man:

You mentioned having an alphabet soup of [regulators] coming to talk to us, and it’s not unlike witnesses coming before our committee with differing points of view in many ways. I have to tell you, I have enjoyed that. Each of the regulators — sometimes gleefully, sometimes not — points out the deficiencies of the other regulators. And I have to tell you, there’s some merit in that, just for what it’s worth. To have a captive regulator, much like we had with the GSE’s, which would be the case with all banks, to me, could be very problematic.

That's right, we can't have what sounds like a good idea because Bob Corker likes it when the small agencies squabble in front of him for his amusement. I mean sure, that system of patchwork regulators was unable to to avert that financial meltdown thingy dingy and our regulatory structure is deeply harmed by shoddy structure of small regulators with limited range, turf battles, and poor funding, but Bob Corker does like a good inter-regulatory fight go down in front of him. You see, he doesn't have cable. It's the only entertainment he gets.

And never mind the fact that the financial service industry is virulently opposed to Dodd's plan and that they think the current system "works good", we certainly don't need better regulation. I mean the total collapse of the markets already happened, it's not like it's gonna happen again. Why improve what doesn't work?