Does Anyone feel like Bailing

Originally Posted by sugarpop

I don't know why we can just put some of the regulations back in place that worked after the Great Depression. Of course we would also need new regulations for some of the new, irresponsible ways financial institutions make money nowadays. Maybe they should just criminalize them.

One reason it will be difficult to put some regs back in place is that Republicans in the Senate will do whatever they can to block it.

The next step?

I would hope that Obama meets his campaign pledge on credit card reform that at the very least would immediately outlaw the practices defined by the Federal Reserve Board as unfair or deceptive and include restrictions on the size of credit card fees and on the size and duration of penalty interest rates.

Obama on Jay Leon:

Obama: Most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal. And that's a sign of how much we've got to change our laws. We were talking earlier about credit cards. It's legal to charge somebody 30% on their credit card and charge fees and so forth that people don't always know what they are getting into. So the answer is to deal with those laws in a way that gives the average consumer a break. When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face, there's a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But When you get a credit card or you get a mortgage, there's no law on the books that says if that explodes in your face financially, somehow you're going to be protected. So this is the need for getting back to some common sense regulations. There's nothing wrong with innovation in the financial markets, we want people to be successful, we want people to be able to make a profit, banks are critical to our economy and we want credit to flow again, but we just want to make sure there's enough regulatory common sense in place that ordinary Americans are not taken advantage of and taxpayers at the back end are not taken care of.

Makes sense to me.