Then again, the same people have been doing the same thing for 25 years. Yet regulation just keeps getting weaker. "You will know that somebody's serious when they put 500 FBI agents and a dozen of our best prosecutors on Wall Street," Kelleher says.
In the meantime, it could all get a lot worse if Mitt Romney is elected. Even after the JP Morgan fiasco, he reiterated his plan to repeal Dodd-Frank, which also contains measures guarding against future bank bailouts.
Michael Forester
"The big banks pulled the pin on their own grenades," says former regulator William Black.
Charles Steck
"Wall Street is a high crime area in which we basically have no cops on the beat," says former securities lawyer Dennis Kelleher.
Related Content
More About
Writes Politico: "Romney's reaction is the equivalent of putting out a small fire in your house, then deciding that the lesson is you need to stuff your house with matches, throw out your fire extinguisher and cancel your fire insurance. And doing all this after the house nearly burned to the ground less than four years ago."
These days, the oil market has again begun to dive — through no help from our leaders. A stalled Chinese economy, plus fears of serial bank crashes in Europe have caused speculators to scatter. Prevailing theory: The world may soon be too broke to buy gas.
But at some point, the economy will show signs of recovery. And Washington has ensured that the speculators will return, there to suffocate it in its infancy.