Beautiful Empty Rhetoric

That pretty much sums up Obama. The candidate gave a speech today on his "plans" to fix the economy, all of which were in keeping with the Democrat principles of big government and more restrictions. The caption on MSNBC.com's lead story sums it up nicely, "Democrat calls for tougher regulations, but offers no specifics on exactly how the government should go about peering over the shoulders of bank executives." Three major tenets are the following:

1. Expand oversight to any institution that borrows from the government.
2. Toughen capital requirements for complex financial instruments like mortgage securities.
3. Streamline regulatory agencies to end overlap and competition among regulators.

This is typical. Blame capitalism for the economy's ills, promise lots of government regulation to make sure nothing bad ever happens again while giving no specifics on how government will achieve anything, and then watch it all fail. The last decade has certainly taught us that executives left to their own devices will skirt the system and that regulation is necessary, but people will always be looking for new schemes and ways around regulations. When you say "expand oversight to any institution that borrows from the government" it sounds a lot like broader versions of the Sarbanes Oxley regulations, which have increased costs for American corporations and driven them to delist from our exchanges.