1. Goldman Sachs should be broken up into at least three parts: into an investment branch, into a deposit branch and into a derivatives or speculative branch;
2. Blankfein should make public a memo guaranteeing that Goldman will never put itself into a position to require a bailout (again) and if it becomes either "illiquid" or "insolvent" will be prepared to go through either bankruptcy or restructuring;
3. Goldman Sachs will put a cap on its leverage in order to reduce risk to others by making sure any new innovations in financial instruments will not destroy the bank itself. It will also promise not to commit accounting control fraud;
4. Goldman Sachs will promise never to speculate with derivatives or will redefine itself as a hedge fund so that people will know what they really stand for;
5. Goldman Sachs should ensure that none of its employees will engage in the "incestuous orgies"* between Wall Street bankers and government entities like Treasury Secretary and and any regulatory body.
* Thanks to Bill Moyers for the expression.
Sheila Bair: 5 Steps Obama or Romney Must Take to Fix Wall Street
By Suzanne McGee - The Fiscal Times
. . . .
Too many regulators fall victim to one of several fatal flaws, Bair suggested in a speech to the National Association for Business Economics yesterday. Some of them over or under-regulate (usually at the wrong point in the cycle); they devise impossibly complex rules; they are “closet free-marketeers” proposing convoluted rules to prove it’s impossible to regulate financial institutions, or they are “captive” regulators who, without any corruption or malfeasance involved, have simply subordinated their judgment to those of the organizations they are charged with overseeing.
The result, says Bair, is a regulation like the Volcker rule, “enormously complex and prescriptive.” She applauds the objective – preventing banks from using depositors’ capital to trade on their own behalf, among other things. But, she adds, “I don’t think it will work. There are lots of exceptions and it will be impossible to enforce.”
Read the whole article and the 5 Steps here
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