Regulations are good for Financial Community (and us!)

We desperately need to bring back regulation of the finanacial industry. This is not socialism, or over-reaction. I simply propose re-instating the regulations that were put in place after the Great Depression that served us so well for so many years (with a couple of common sense additions!)
1. Bring back Glass-Steagall.
2. Eliminate regional and (especially) national banks. This is a very new thing, allowing banks to be larger than statewide. Letting banks be national has not provided any benefits to consumers or society, it has just allowed CEO-s and deal-makers to satisfy their egos. 3. Regulate credit cards exactly as we do banks. Banks are not allowed to charge usurious interest, yet credit cards get away with it all the time. That was one of the main reasons they were invented - as a way to sneak around the existing bank regulations. Bring them into the regulatory fold!
4. eliminate the shadow stock and bond trading markets. These are being used to drastically manipulate the stock market, and to give insiders an edge (all legal right now). This is what the robber barons did in the gilded age. It is back, and needs to be eliminated.
5. Charge the SEC or some government agency with monitoring new "financial vehicles". Lack of oversight is why derivatives and CDO's and their ilk were created. They are not new, creative ways to do finance, nor are they the "wave of the future". They are created solely as a means of circumventing existing regulations, so the "inventors" can cash in on huge profits for activities that should be either banned or regulated.
6. Break apart investment and "real" and commercial banks, as was the case for most of the period since the Great Depression. All of those protections were put in place for valid reasons, and were cast aside by profiteers.

Doing these things will go a long way towards restoring balance. No socialism, just common sense regulation.

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