Your new dissapointment

Chris Dodd's financial legislation is almost finished and a palpable sense of the crushing of the last vestiges of hope that it'll be useful is in the air. Last week he dramatically broke off talks with Republicans in his Senate Committee For Bank Sponsored Handjobs and Financial Industry Massages because he felt they weren't going anywhere. Apparently he didn't want the legislation to be really weak and gutless, only mostly weak and gutless.

We all remember the Fed, right? You know, the money gurus that completely failed to see the financial apocalypse or take steps to avert it, abdicated its regulation responsibilities, are handing out billions as we speak to corporations, and can't seem to find the time to follow the mandate that it enact policies to ensure full employment? Those guys? Their chairman has a beard. Well I hope you like them, because they're going to get even more power and regulatory responsibility that they won't use.

In a proposal set to be unveiled this afternoon, Sen. Chris Dodd (D - Conn.) anchors his latest financial reform bill around a relatively undiminished Federal Reserve.
...
As Simon Johnson notes, critics will surely object to the fact that Dodd's bill will entrust the Federal Reserve to oversee the nation's largest and most systemically important financial firms. "Unfortunately, on the major issue - too big to fail financial institutions that caused the 2008-09 crisis and that will likely trigger the next meltdown - there is nothing meaningful in the proposed legislation," Johnson wrote of the bill.

Just last year, Reuters notes, Dodd said the Fed had been "an abysmal failure." Now, it appears the central bank has made "a remarkable recovery."

Not only does the Fed gain an nonindependent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, it keeps its authority over bank holding companies, gains new authority over financial firms, and supervises state-chartered banks. This is kind of a dramatic overhaul of Dodd's first proposed bill, which stripped all regulatory powers from the Fed. But hey, sometimes you've got to make compromises to get no Republican support.

And who is to blame? Well, Dodd, who despite retiring still wants to conduct himself as if he's going to need industry support to gain re-election. But, like with the health care bill, the troubling capitulation to industry interests and an overwhelming optimism in the ability of groups of people that simultaneous failed and fucked us to learn from their mistakes without any legal requirement or strong regulatory incentive to do so comes from.... the White House. *pumps fist*

So in case you were wondering whether the largest financial collapse since the Great Depression and the forced multi-trillion dollar bailout of nearly every large financial corporation and bank in order to keep things from getting worse was enough to teach our elected betters something, the answer is no. A resounding no. God bless that special, extra-hard cement the baby Jesus poured into their heads.