Yes, yes, but what about?

Yes, yes we agree that the rational market is a myth but, what about the perhaps even larger myth of a rational regulator?

Yes, yes we agree there is a moral hazard present when bailing out the banks but, what about the perhaps even larger moral hazard of not punishing the regulators who failed?

What we first must do is to cut off the currently too visible hand!

Here we are, standing in front of the ruins of a horrendous financial crisis…

provoked by the most outrageous market intervention ever…

which occurred when bank regulators thinking themselves so brilliant…

concocted capital requirements for banks based on the risk of default as perceived by some few credit rating agencies…

like only 1.6 percent capital, which means allowing a 62.5 to 1 leverage, for anything related to an AAA rating…

and thereby rewarded additionally what was already rewarded by the traditionally coward capital markets….

to such an extent that the financial system stampeded toward safe-havens and turned these into dangerously overcrowded traps…

and now some have the gall to tell us it is “Time for a Visible Hand”

NO! What we first must do is to cut off the current too visible hand

There´s a too big confusion about the “too big to fail” banks.

The losses that generated the current crisis were NOT caused because some banks were too big to fail.

It is the way many of those losses are now being distributed between the investors, the banks and the supposed taxpayers that is being affected by the too big to fail.

Absolutely, banks should be cut down to size, as I have been arguing before Simon Johnson and others could walk (well almost). http://bit.ly/HIi3x

If we get rid of the “too big to fail” banks but keep using credit rating agencies to allow for absurd low and discriminatory bank capital requirements we will have done nothing to correct what brought us this mess of absurdly stupid financial losses.