<p>It is a real burden on the smaller banks. We’re currently doing a re-fi at the same S&L that we did the original mortgage from 15 years ago. This is a small local outfit that holds and services its own paper (yes, those still exist), so they have our existing mortgage and know us well. Loan officer told DW that there’s still several hours of paperwork she has to go through simply to satisfy the new regs - and this even for a mortgage that will never go into the broader market.</p>
<p>Hmmmm…maybe we have regulation overkill.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s regulation overkill. I think it’s just the flat out wrong regulation. They’ve regulated lending to an extreme, and they are all over the small banks and they are ignoring, until dire circumstances, the TBTF’s. then, they put on a dog and pony show and put them “on trial” in front of congress for all the voters to see and do nothing that will actually help.</p>
<p>To be fair, I think the congress has no idea what will actually help, and the people who do know, the regulators and the FED, are in bed with the TBTF’s and aren’t making any kind of substantive recommendations.</p>
<p>And yet, we look back at Glass-Steagall. So simple, so to the point, so effective for so many years. I think we all just wish for the days of common-sense governance.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the small community banker and the main street merchant pay the price.</p>
<p>Ok…sounds right.</p>
<p>I don’t think another version of Glass-Steagall is in the cards.</p>
<p>Nope, dstark, it’s not in the cards because Congress is in the bed with the banks, and the banks want to be able to do whatever the hell they please. Jamie Dimon, the head of JPM, has been a vocal critic of the very regulation which would have prevented the losses they were forced to admit to last week. Dimon posed as the good guy of investment banking, Mr. Responsible who would never put his bank or the economy at risk – even as JPM continued to invest in the same kinds of complex instruments and derivatives which led to the crash in ‘08. Bankers would never take crazy risks, he says. We’ve learned our lesson, he says. Greed has vanished from the world of banking. No one would ever risk investors’ money, or taxpayers’ money, or the entire US economy, just because they stand to make multi-million dollar bonuses. We’ll behave this time, we really, really will. Sure. </p>
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<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/opinion/dimons-deja-vu-debacle.html]Dimon’s”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/opinion/dimons-deja-vu-debacle.html]Dimon’s</a> D</p>
<p>LasMa…</p>
<p>Great post.</p>
<p>Don’t think about it for a second…</p>
<p>I never believed the BS Jaime Dimon sells…or Blankfein or …</p>
<p>Gee, I wonder how much the TARP “bailout” ended up costing the taxpayer (if you exclude the aid to the auto industry, AIG, and programs aimed at avoiding foreclosures)?</p>
<p>Yeah… TARP was the only bailout the banks received…</p>
<p>One easy thing to claen-up–no buying or selling of derivatives based on performance of another entitiy unless you have a direct insurable interest in that entity. That is you can only bet(insure) GM bonds failing to the amount you actually own them. And sellers of such insurance must be in that business only.</p>