More financial regulation stuff, prompted by this post, and this one from Economix. . I agree 100% that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should go, that the mortgage interest deduction should be limited or abolished, and that the government should no more meddle in preferring homeownership over renting and vice versa. As we’ve just learned, it’s all well and good as long as things are running along relatively smoothly, but when it fails, it fails catastrophically, and everybody is on the hook.

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• Current Mood: Resting
• Just Watched: Little Miss Sunshine

I’ve wanted to write something about the financial reform bill for a while now, but school and work and wedding planning and campaigning and the rest of real life have conspired against me. I did, however, find this post on the Freakonomics blog asking a few experts on what they would do to simplify the bill, and by and large I agree with all of those recommendations. Sadly, given the sausage-making process that is democracy, we didn’t get a bill that was nearly so neat and clean.

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• Current Mood: Flustered
• Currently Listening To: "Please Please Me", The Beatles

Lately, FrumForum has been the only bastion of fairly reasonable conservative thought. Take, for example, this post in which Peruvian free-market thinker Hernando de Soto Polar lists what he thinks is necessary for effective derivatives regulation. His list is something I wholeheartedly agree with, especially the reminder that the financial system only helps create wealth, it should never be seen as a wealth generator in and of itself. It also, coincidentally, jibes fairly well with the legislation in Congress. No wonder financial reform is seen as an electoral winner.

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• Current Mood: Testy
• Currently Listening To: "Girl With No Eyes", It's A Beautiful Day

The news is awash with stories about how Wall Street bonuses are reaching all-time highs this year, despite the near-total collapse of the economy last year and the continuing woes in just about every sector except for finance that we are still seeing. It didn’t take long for Wall Street to bounce back from its nadir, and now, buoyed by taxpayer bailouts, they are resuming the party for their employees. Understandably, this has caused outrage among just about everybody who doesn’t work in finance, along with calls to regulate Wall Street pay. But pay regulation misses the point completely, as these huge bonuses are just the symptom of the real problem. To correct the egregious bonuses, you have to solve the underlying problem.

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