Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Robert Reich,
former U.S. secretary of labor and now a professor at the University of
California at Berkeley. It was originally posted his website, Robert
Reich's Blog, on Tuesday, June 16, 2009.
As the White House unveils its long-awaited proposals to prevent another Wall
Street meltdown in the future, keep a lookout for three essentials. Without
them the Street will revert to its old ways as soon as the coast clears. In
fact, now that the government has bailed out the Street, the biggest banks will
take even larger and more irresponsible risks because they're officially
too big to fail. So these three reforms are critical.
1. Stop bankers from making huge, risky bets with other peoples' money.
At the least, require they back their bets with a large percentage of their
own capital, and bar them from raising money off their balance sheets through
derivative trades. Also require they take their pay in stock options or warrants
that can't be cashed in for at least three years, so they'll take
a longer-term view. Best of all would be a requirement that investment banks
return to being partnerships and the capital on their books be their own, not
yours or your pension fund's. When investment banks were partnerships,
every partner took an active interest in what every other partner and trader
was doing. The real mischief started once they started selling shares to the
public.
2. Prevent any bank from becoming too big to fail. Separate commercial from
investment banking, as they were before the late 1990s. Commercial banks should
return to their basic function of linking savers with borrowers. Investment
bankers should return to their casino function of placing bets in the stock
market and advising you and others about where to place your own own bets. Combining
the basic utility with the casino only made bankers far richer and subjected
you and me to risks we didn't bargain for. If separating commercial from
investment banking isn't enough to bring all banks down to reasonable
size, use antitrust laws to break them up.
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