I have to admit I don’t know any sheep farmers, but even I know that it’s not customary for these folks to ask the wolf for suggestions about protecting the sheep.  Questions about fences and guard dogs are not something about which the farmer would consult with the predator.   This is not horse (or sheep) sense.  It’s just plain and simple common sense.

That is why I have to laugh whenever I read in the mainstream press about how Wall Street, meaning the big banks, is “resisting” new rules and tighter regulations in the aftermath of the catastrophic meltdown that the Street brought about.

My response to this “resistance” is quite simple: Who’s asking them what they think?  And why?

It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out who the predators were in the events of the last few years.   And it certainly doesn’t take a genius to know who the prey was!

Yet, here we are a year after Lehman Brothers collapsed and we are no closer to tougher regulation for these predators than we were before. 

Can I understand that Wall Street would “resist” being overseen more stringently?  Of course. 

But in point of fact, the Street through its reckless machinations and “innovations” nearly brought this country’s and the global financial system to the very edge of the cliff.  The only reason all of us weren’t dragged along with Lehman was that the government pulled out all the stops to prevent it. 

Since it was the government that saved the butts of almost every major Wall Street firm and big bank, the government should be calling the shots when it comes to creating a system where these firms don’t carry us to the brink again. 

It’s a year later and here we are (in typical American fashion) marking the first anniversary of Lehman’s demise. And we’re doing it almost as a historical exercise. I fear we have already forgotten just how terrifying last September was and the stomach-churning that marked day after day of failures and bailouts.

There is yet another pocket of resistance to stricter regulation, greater consumer protection and restructuring the financial regulatory system, and that comes from the very regulators who failed us so terribly in the lead-up to September 2008.   None of these banking regulators wants to give up turf—not to another regulator or to a new agency with the express mandate of protecting consumers.   

My reaction both to Wall Street and Bernanke and Co. is ‘tough,’ a word the street knows and respects.

So I hope that President Obama is tough and means to follow through on his stern message to Wall Street on Sept. 14.  Speaking to those who “are misreading this moment” and “are choosing to ignore” the lessons of Lehman, the president said, “We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.”

After what’s happened I don’t believe that firms should even have the option of “choosing to ignore” the past. Recklessness and malfeasance have to have their consequences.

Settling for anything less, and especially to placate Wall Street, is the equivalent of putting the farmer inside the fence, while the sheep are left on the outside with the wolves.

The headline above describes how I feel about the glimmers of “evidence” being put forth by some economists and commentators that the Great Recession is starting to wind down and could be history by year-end.
All these signs that are noted as signs of hope are on the macroeconomic level, however. And while, literally, it may be true that two consecutive quarters of GDP growth mean we’re out of the recessionary woods, in this case the macro signals mean squat.
Flash to the ivory tower: The recession is very much alive at the micro level.
It just goes to show that you can use statistics to prove anything you want.
This is also playing out in the great debate over healthcare reform where the same statistics are often used to reach opposite conclusions.
Thus, one faction will emphasize that 85% of the population is covered by health insurance and there is no need—pressing or otherwise–to change a system where so many are covered.
The other side will respond with the fact that 15% of the population is around 47 million people who aren’t covered and that this kind of situation is untenable in a country like ours.
The response to this–and believe me I know because any time I mention the 47 million I get the same response—is that of course there are not 47 million people uninsured and that once you take out the illegal immigrants, the young people who can’t afford health insurance, the rich people who won’t buy health insurance and other assorted groups, you are left with around 2 or 3 million who are really uninsured.
(I didn’t really intend to get into the healthcare reform quagmire in this piece, but there’s no avoiding it, it seems.)
In any case, one set of statistics that doesn’t lie came out from LIMRA International the other day and had to do with individual life sales in the first six months of this year. They would seem to provide pretty strong proof that the recession still has quite a way to go.
The headline of LIMRA’s release read in part: “Steepest Six Month Drop in Individual Life Insurance Sales in Almost 70 Years…”
Yes, Virginia, that means since 1942.
Individual life annualized premiums were down 23% in the six months, with some product lines down considerably more than that. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to come to the conclusion that variable life and variable universal life are down the most, some 72% and 55%, respectively, for the six months.
Other product lines, while not so depressingly bad were still off year to date.
The rest of LIMRA’s release headline read: “…But Results Improve Slightly from First Quarter.” The evidence for this is that the falloff in the second quarter was less than in the first.
What the figures show me, however, is that there is still too much pain and suffering out there for one to conclude that the recession will be over soon.
It’s not only consumers who are suffering (and thereby holding off purchasing life insurance), but obviously companies are feeling the pain and agents are getting their share too. This pain has enormous ripples throughout our economy as vendors, media and other service providers feel the pinch.
I’d love to believe the glimmers of evidence economists see are more than fool’s gold, but those sparkles just don’t look real.

The attention span of the American public-never great to begin with unless a story has to do with the death or scandal of a celebrity like Michael Jackson, in which case the appetite is insatiable-is giving public figures a freer and freer ride as time goes by.

One area in which this is becoming increasingly obvious is politicians’ blatant attempt to rewrite history even as they are making it.  A choice example is Sarah Palin stating that she was not a quitter even as she was resigning as Alaska’s governor with about a year-and-a-half to go in her first term.  Yes, of course, she was going to fight the good fight elsewhere, and so therefore she could not be accused of quitting.

Now, even if everything is relative, there is still the duck test that must be passed.  And here, I’m afraid, the now ex-governor couldn’t upend the fact that her resignation looked like a duck, walked like a duck and quacked like a duck.  She quit.

Which brings me to a figure closer to the concerns of insurance people, and that is Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is rewriting history with assiduity.  Many people now believe that the Fed not only did very little, if anything at all, to protect consumers in the lead up to the Great Recession, but that the Fed was the prime enabler of many of the situations that nearly sank us.  In some ways, many now believe, the Fed was the three see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys all wrapped up in one.

Out of control risky investments by banks, investment banks and other firms too big to fail?  Where was the Fed?

Out of control mortgage business rife with abuse and outright fraud?  Where was the Fed?

Credit card abuses by banks that have fleeced and victimized countless consumers?  Where was the Fed?

 Of course, many of these situations started before Bernanke took office in 2006.  His predecessor, Alan Greenspan of the now shrunken reputation as the financial wizard of all time, laid the groundwork for the catastrophe to come.  But Bernanke did his share of turning a blind eye too.

So now, when the Fed is being faced with legislative moves to trim its sails somewhat and the administration is pushing to create a federal consumer protection agency, the Fed is taking the line that it is the agency in the best position to protect consumers in the areas of mortgages, credit cards, etc.

Never mind that the Fed was seen to be too cozy with the banks for which it was the regulator and that this coziness was a prime contributor to the unprecedented risks that some of the largest banking institutions in the country undertook. 

The way the Fed’s reasoning goes now, as articulated by Bernanke in the dog and pony show he is conducting across the country and on the airwaves, is that because the Fed knows banks and is responsible for protecting banks, it is in the best position of any agency to protect the consumers who depend on banks.  There’s no conflict.

I think it takes a lot of nerve for the top Fed official to say that there is no conflict here when we are continuing to slog through the detritus that this very conflict wrought.

Bernanke’s actions may indeed have  pulled us back from the brink last fall, but I think it is fair to say that we would not have gotten to that brink if the Fed had been more insistent on being the regulator it was supposed to be than the cheerleader that so many perceived it to be.

Saying you’re best qualified to protect consumers when the evidence shows you didn’t is like saying you’re not quitting when that’s what you did. 

What do you say, ducky?  

Quack, quack.  I thought so.