It wasn’t just the banks. The SEC was asleep at the wheel. Why is this country wasting money on an SEC that doesn’t do its job?
I think it is past time for the government to carry out a “soft antitrust” on financial institutions.
The basic concept is that any financial corporation that is “too big to fail”, is also “too big to continue”.
The idea of a soft antitrust is to let these corporations know that if they continue on their present course, the government will break them up. And the way to avoid this is to break themselves up, in a more orderly manner.
To do such a breakup, they must follow some very firm rules.
1) No “shell” breakups. Assets and debts of each part of the new companies shall be about equitably divided.
2) No sharing of board members or investors. Other organizations with board representation (proxies) are limited to just one board member of one of the companies in the breakup.
3) No territorial division, nor any other form of market collusion.
If soft antitrust works, it should be used for other industries, excepting the media, which should be “hard” antitrusted.
And who forced them into taking risky loans? Janet Reno and Bill Clinton.