Mind Over Market

In an interview conducted by Bill Moyers October 26, 2012, Former Special Inspector General for TARP, Neil Barofsky, talks about the need for new reforms in banking regulation and oversight and warns that the financial system is headed for another crisis. Transcript: BILL MOYERS: And now for another reality check -- a far cry from the humbug and rhetorical static afflicting our election campaigns. Let’s talk about something President Obama and Governor Romney barely mentioned in their debates: banking reform. It’s four years since the economic meltdown knocked America and the world to our knees, four years since that massive taxpayer bailout. But if you listened to the candidates, the enormity and severity of this continuing crisis hardly merit notice. Barack Obama pledges change but touts Dodd-Frank, a bulky, watered-down version of financial reform that scarcely makes a ripple in the vast sea of corruption and abuse. Mitt Romney campaigns as the banker’s pal and says he’ll mak...

Insight on what banks should do to prevent 2008 from happening all over again, with Neil Barofsky, TARP special investigator general. http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1777498977&play=1

Neil Barofsky, in his 224-page quarterly report to Congress as the Special Inspector General for TARP, argues that the extraordinary efforts taken to rescue banks in the 2008 financial meltdown, have inadvertently created a situation where a future crisis will be even worse. Read the entire report, released January 30, 2010, at this link: http://www.sigtarp.gov/reports/congress/2010/January2010_Quarterly_Report_to_Congress.pdf Read FoxNews.com story on the report at this link: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/31/watchdog-bailouts-created-risk/ Below is a section of the Executive Summary that is particularly insightful: It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date. • To the extent that huge, interconnected, “too big to fail” institutions contributed to the crisis, those institutions are now even larger, in part because of the substantial subsidies provided by TARP and other bailout programs. • To the extent that institutions were...