The US House of Representatives began debate today on a massive financial institutions reform bill. It, and the hundreds of amendments that have already been helpfully proposed to improve it, are designed to avoid any repetition of the current woes in which we currently wallow. They will prevent such bad occurrences in the future by creating powerful new federal bureaucracies, and giving more power to certain existing federal bureaucracies (while stripping other bureaucracies of power). Human nature can be changed by powerful central governmental apparatus, or at the very least its baser nature can be effectively restrained by those in power in the epicenter of probity and moral rectitude: Washington, D.C. That's the theory, at any rate, history be damned.
Regional and community bankers are not drinking the Kool-Aid. Neither are their trade associations. A call went out this week from the Texas Bankers Association for bankers to contact their representatives to advise them that bankers are dead-set against the enactment of this legislation. The TBA prepared a Power Point presentation to support this call to arms. It was obviously prepared by Texans, since one of the speakers uses the term "fixin' to" (as in "I'm fixin' to kick your scrawny buttocks, Hoss"). Nevertheless, even Yankee bankers should be able to cut through the twang and catch the drift of the warnings issued. Time is short. Start working the phones. Tell the paragons of principle that 2010 is only a year away. As one old hand says, "They're counting noses and PAC contributions."
Personally, the most horrifying (and, therefore, most effective) scare tactic contained in the presentation is the mental image of Elizabeth Warren as "Consumer Financial Protection Czar." Since she's had a history of histrionics while blogging about banks and their evil ways, bankers can expect her to do everything possible to drive them out of business if she's anointed by "The One," which is expected should the office be created.
As a bloodsucking vampire whose fangs are securely fastened to the neck of the proletariat, I find that prospect sufficiently disturbing to motivate me to contact my local representative, even though I know that person to be reliably reactionary and luminously Luddite when it comes to progressive legislative proposals of any stripe. Nonetheless, it's always satisfying for the booted and horsed classes to commiserate among themselves when the masses rise to impinge our hereditary privileges.
This should be a fun few days.
