Mr. Bernanke said the Fed had known nothing about this. After all, he explained, the Fed wasn’t Lehman’s regulator — the Securities and Exchange Commission was. The Fed had placed some people at Lehman — not as many as the S.E.C. had — but they were there only to ensure that Lehman paid back money it was borrowing from the government. Can’t lay this on him.
No of course not....more on flip
Meanwhile, the S.E.C. insists that it could not have known what Lehman was up to because it was "understaffed" and "ill-suited" to run a voluntary oversight program. But, the commission says, since the Lehman bankruptcy examiner’s report it has sprung into action, investigating whether other banks might also have cooked the books.
Any minute now, expect to hear that the Treasury, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — our other federal bank regulators — were just as shocked that Lehman used make-believe sales to hide its ocean of red ink.
Ahhh ha
a terrific op ed !
How Washington Abetted the Bank Job
http://www.nytimes.com/...
As Congress now considers reforming the financial industry, it needs to take into account how abysmally our regulators performed when they coordinated their efforts and how insular their decision-making has been on matters that affect the entire economy. Congress needs to recognize that "regulatory capture," in which an agency becomes a pawn of the industry it is supposed to oversee, is real.
IMO the fact that no one went to jail or even got fired for total malfeasance suggests that both regulation and internal oversight are grossly inadequate.
It appears the Obama admin and our corptocracy infested Congress has NO WILL to change the status quo so the US economy will continue its over-dependence on Financial capitalism ( asset bubbles, ponzi schemes ) and Americans will get more 'extend and pretend' and kicking of the can down the road...