AND SO IT GOES, as Kurt Vonnegut used to write. Little progress at Davos 2010 or anywhere else discussing global banking reform, or the policing of financial mandarins in any way. No surprise, of course. Little sweeping regulatory change by anyone on Planet Moolah since the fall of 2008, when the frightening scope of the financial crisis first emerged, and the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Congress struggled frantically with the beast. Three clear points stuck in my mind back then, as the business media cast its eyes on the monster and said, Oh shit:
(1) NO CHANGE. Little, if anything, will change on the global regulatory front in oversight, transparency and enforcement. That's human nature and the unstoppable tide of business and the economy. Money shall rule, and always will rule. (2) NOBODY KNOWS. No one really knows or is telling the whole story, given the self-serving versions spouted by key players in the drama. There are financial records, memos and emails, legal depositions, and other juicy documents hiding in safes and locked offices that no one -- save a few attorneys, trust fund trustees, private clients, and their gods -- will ever see. (3) FUNNY, THAT DODD GUY. Hey, U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd was right. As lawmakers slapped together bailout legislation in September 2008, as e-mail drafts of the proposal flew back and forth, a droll Dodd chuckled in a late-night phone interview and said, "I imagine we'll be talking a lot about this."
THEY'RE STILL TALKING today, with no sure roadmap to ensure that the system won't melt down again. Well ain't that a bitch. At Davos, writes SkyNews blogger Mark Kleinman: "One person present at today's meeting said he believed that this week had represented a significant step forward for banking reform 'because there is now a consensus that consensus is necessary.' " Encouraging. It's like kids playing in the sandbox, agreeing not to argue. Except that the economic well-being of several billion people is at stake. The monster lives. Makes you want to jump on the next space shuttle, don't it?
- Forbes.com, "Not a Bang, Not a Whimper" by Evelyn Rusli.
- SkyNews.com, "Davos 2010: Some Progress on Bank Reforms" by Mark Kleinman.
- SeekingAlpha.com, "Upcoming Default Tsunami Grabs Power from Banking Industry" by Toni Straka of The Prudent Investor.
- BuzzMachine.com and HuffingtonPost.com, "The Disrupted of Davos." by Jeff Jarvis.
- CoolGlobalBiz.com, "Will Obama's U.S.-style Corporate Governance Go Global?" by Edward Iwata.
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