Regulatory Mindset

President Obama's speech on regulatory reform was less painful than I had feared. I was hoping that Obama would have given us more details on the plan. Instead his briefing was more like the vague political posturing used by the Neocon Phil Gramm (R-Texas) back in the Clinton era to sell us on Credit Default Swaps.

The speech had many good points. For example, Obama dislikes the horrifically complex mortgages with pages of fine print that few can understand. This section of the speech would be welcome if not for the fact that it was given by a person with a track record or jamming through extremely complex legislation rife with fine print that few understand.

The turn in the speech that I liked was that Obama did not say our problems were the result of the last eight years (he said they were the results of decades of thinking). He also did not blame economic woes on "deregulation."

Unfortunately, I fear that the leaders of this nation (both R and Ds) have realized that our problems are not simply with the regulations in place, but with the way that we think about the economy.

Obama's speech establishes risk management as the primnary concern of the economy.

In reality, the central focus of the economy should be the building of equity coupled with people the living happy, fulfilled lives.

This process of created a hugely centralized government justified by risk management concerns is precisely the wrong direction.

Don't you see? The whole point of Credit Default Swaps, the mortgage backed securities, the government backed re-insurance, the short selling, the hedge funds, and the myraid of other complex financial instruments was an ill fated effort to create a set of financial tools that would set up a ruling class.

To truly solve the problem we need to root deeper and find the problem with our thinking that made risk management, opposed to building equity, the primary concern of our economy.