Of course - what the banks did back then was plain and simple wrong. Even what they're doing now (dabbling in structured credit products like JP Morgan's ~ $3B loss) is stupid. Plus they're getting cheap cash from the Fed to finance their activities.
The trouble is - the economy needs liquidity at the consumer level and it's the banks who should provide that. If the Fed had the authority to knock on everyone's door and lend them money at 0-0.25%, it would do that. But sadly, the political class never creates regulations which force the banks to pass on the liquidity provided by the Fed - after all, that would leave the banks with less profits and lesser money still to donate to political campaigns.
As far as your comment on "let them all fail" - I disagree. For all the undeserved liquidity that the banks are currently enjoying, it is a far more benign evil than having all the banks fail - US Inc would probably still be firing 200,000 people every month instead of adding 100,000 (as it is doing now).
Obviously, you can't let them all fail, but if you don't let significant banks go under, how do you address the systematic moral hazard that encourages this behavior? It's a big problem, that, if anything, is worse now than it was in 2008.
Comments
Of course - what the banks did back then was plain and simple wrong. Even what they're doing now (dabbling in structured credit products like JP Morgan's ~ $3B loss) is stupid. Plus they're getting cheap cash from the Fed to finance their activities.
The trouble is - the economy needs liquidity at the consumer level and it's the banks who should provide that. If the Fed had the authority to knock on everyone's door and lend them money at 0-0.25%, it would do that. But sadly, the political class never creates regulations which force the banks to pass on the liquidity provided by the Fed - after all, that would leave the banks with less profits and lesser money still to donate to political campaigns.
As far as your comment on "let them all fail" - I disagree. For all the undeserved liquidity that the banks are currently enjoying, it is a far more benign evil than having all the banks fail - US Inc would probably still be firing 200,000 people every month instead of adding 100,000 (as it is doing now).
Obviously, you can't let them all fail, but if you don't let significant banks go under, how do you address the systematic moral hazard that encourages this behavior? It's a big problem, that, if anything, is worse now than it was in 2008.
Split the banks up. One bank that is too large to fail can become 5 banks that individually can fail.
Unfortunately we've gone the other way.