Financier, Heal Thyself? Don't Count on It

Cutting Wall Street's Gordian Knot

Call me a skeptic when it comes to financial reform.

If health care consumed a solid year of legislative maneuvering, how much time will it take to carefully consider the various and sundry proposals to rein in Wall Street, which is infinitely more complicated?

Which is kind of the point, actually.

Wall Street and modern-day finance are so mind-numbingly complex that you need to enlist Wall Street-types to oversee it.

So, that's how you get former Goldman Sachs and other financial executives in dozens of senior government positions, influencing -- and setting -- U.S. policy towards the financial industry.

Wall Street is also so complicated that you need Wall Street's expertise to help reform it.

Which is, as they say, "the rub."

Giving Wall Street insiders a seat at the financial reform table -- as it clearly now has -- virtually assures that any legislation that emerges from Congress will: a) be weak; and b) contain sufficient ambiguities and loopholes that it will effectively be "business as usual."

After the biggest financial crash since The Great Depression.

That result simply isn't acceptable.

My proposal?

Part 2: The 90% Solution