accounting fraud, anyone? super-leverage, anyone? oh, giant banks. no? okay, perhaps our friend, simon johnson has some answers, contributing business editor to the huffington post. simon, do you think anybody knows why the market did what it did last week? no, i don t, dylan. certainly no regulators have the faintest clue. perhaps there are some market participants who know more, but they re not speaking out. if you were to look at the most useful thing, somebody who agrees with your assessment, somebody who agrees with my assessment, somebody who agrees with the assessment that s shared with not only you and i, but dozens, thousands, millions of other people about bank size, about transparency and accountability. those who would want to close the casino and restore capitalism, how much of a victory was today s passage of the bernie sand ers amendment? it was baby step, dylan, as you said. i m not sure i want to call it a
victory. it will depend on what the audit shows. i do think the assets that were taken into the so-called maiden lane vehicles, which were started when bear stearns failed, those were interesting. and the more you get to look at those, the more unsettled you and many other people are going to become. so the sanders amendment is helpful, but not huge. reality check we ve got accounting fraud at the heart of the banking system. super-leverage is still in place, the big banks are bigger than they ve ever been. we ve got $1 trillion good for you would think $1 trillion would be good for more than 400 points on the dow. but you ve got greece and europe in its period of development. what in the big picture is the direction that not only markets, but systems are headed right now in your assessment? well the big direction is obviously bad, look the
disappeared briefly on thursday. and as a result, want to try to find out how to stop it. the problem is you have to admit that it s based on accounting lies, money printing and high-frequency trading designed explicitly for the profitability of the banks, building a giant house of cards that is easily tipped over for reasons that even the top exchange regulators still days later, cannot explain. oh, yeah, you re fine. after meeting with administration officials yesterday, the group reportedly agreed to the creation of a marketwide circuit-breaker system for all exchange. what is stunning in that statement is the fact that it doesn t exist already. the term refers to a series of safeguards that would halt or slow down trades during a massive market swing like last week s scare. of course, our primary task in our government is to try to treat symptoms of problems, instead of root causes.
supervisors are largely under the employment of the crooks. the people they re supposed to be supervising, whether it s the regulators and the banks, the regulators and the energy companies, the regulators and the auto companies. you can pick the list, and it s either because they re incentivized to get a job of with one of those companies when they leave government. or they just came out of government and are coming in to be a supervisor. is it time for america and its government to be honest about its regulatory system, as one that is largely corrupted by those who it is supposed to be regulating? dylan, i think what president obama has done since he came into power here in washington as our president, is to say that days of the washington of old are over. and so the influences of special interests, he has been fighting them from day one. and with respect to what s happening in the regulatory world. we have put in ethics measures and beefed up the ethics efforts
royalties, long energy. while at the same time enforcing and setting industry standards and safety standards that might diminish that revenue or the timing that you might get it. and you wonder why the oil industry writes its own rules. we ll see how receptive lawmakers are to mr. salazar s idea of the split. the industry has yet to have their say. not to mention it is pretty amazing three weeks after the oil spill we re talking about rexing the agency, splitting up agencies. two years after a financial meltdown from unmitigated gambling with our own money, we re hard-pressed to find any politician in washington that wants to break up the big banks. as for the spill which has swelled to four million gallons in the water, there s no silver bullet to shot off the valve or stop the ongoing eruption of this volcano of oil underneath