[r9etb]

Camel's nose, m'friend. This chap sees quite clearly that, if the goobermint can unlawfully regulate the salaries of ANY persons, then sooner or later it will be regulating the salaries of everyone.

Perhaps so -- and I think that would be a bad thing.

OTOH, your comment does nothing to address the fact that the greedy bastards who caused this problem were actually taking advantage of a lack of government regulation in certain areas.

John Adams said, "We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

Where, as here, the finance types are clearly devoid of the sort of self-restraint about which Adams spoke ... a government based on an assumption of self-restraint is quite clearly insufficient to the task of making them behave.

[SAJ]

No offense, but you're mistaken. There were a plethora of applicable regulations. Remember, we're talking about securitsed loans at the root of the problem. There are 3 separate regulatory agencies that must pass on bundles of securitised loans before they can be put on offer.

Greedy bastards? Yep, no shortage of those. The greedy bastards couldn't have put the ball in play, though -- couldn't even have got the game going -- without the sheer and persistent incompetence of SEC, COC, CFTC, FASB, HUD, and easily a dozen other alphabet-soup agencies.