Exasperated
With Financial Regulation passing, I feel like I should be happier than I am. Wall Street’s conduct in the lead up to the crash was reprehensible to the point of being evil. The fact that there will now be regulation to keep that behavior in check should give me comfort. It doesn’t.
The main reason why I cannot bring myself to embrace the regulation is that it relies on regulatory agencies. Regulatory agencies, in my mind, are where the incompetent go to excel. (That is unless, of course, you are talking about the Mineral Management Services bureau [recently re-branded], in which case it is where the incompetent go to make a Los Angeles S&M club look like an Owatonna prayer circle).Creating new bureaucracy would only result more confusion, so the only route for the government to follow was to build upon the existing framework. In this case, that means using the Federal Reserve and the SEC. For those keeping score at home, those are the two bands of schmucks who were keeping watch of the flock as it was slowly being devoured by wolves. In the case of the SEC, they were not actually watching the flock so much as porn FOR 8 HOURS A DAY. (Why? 8 hours of anything is work. Now, you’ve just ruined porn for yourself). Even if they weren’t completely dysfunctional, lobbyists from the financial industry would eventually co-opt the organization.
I am opposed to letting Wall Street run wild, but I am even more opposed to employing a federal employee passively watch Wall Street run wild. I wish I had an answer for this, but instead I am just exasperated.
I am equally upset with the Administration for the way it handled the situation with this USDA employee. Some nobody blogger (yes, I hypocritically use that word in a derogatory fashion) doctors up a video to make an impassioned speech against racism look like black pettiness. Rather than taking a principled stand and defending her, Vilsack caves and gives her the boot. Now, the Administration is forced to backtrack on the matter. The incident has made me realize two things. First, the media establishment is so broken that it is time to give up hope for it to ever be a vehicle for meaningful dialog. Instead, it is time for white men to step up and assert that this kind of deceitful fear-mongering no longer resonates with us. Second, I have realized that we got it wrong with the Obama campaign. We were so excited about having a “post-racial” President, we got ahead of ourselves. Before we can be post-racial, everyone must have a chance to say their piece, to speak and be understood. We don’t need a post-racial President; we need a black President. We need a President who can serve as a mouthpiece for expressing the frustrations of black Americans, so that white Americans might hear and understand. The African American minority cannot do this on their own. White Americans must demand it. It is the only way for us to move forward.
