Democrats in D.C. are going about this regulation thing all wrong.
Want to get Republican buy-in? Give Republicans the kind of regulation
they like. As usual in U.S. politics, the states provide the road map.
Take Arizona. There, the party of small government's just released
police to stop people on suspicion. Want to break GOP resistance to
financial regulation? Release the SEC to spot-check Wall Street. Anyone
who looks suspiciously likely to be hawking synthetic derivatives? Slap
'em in detention until their lawyers can prove they're innocent. It's
all in the interests of crime prevention.
Oklahoma's state legislature just overrode the governor's veto of two
laws related to pregnancy and abortion. Personal privacy's nice but
even good people sometimes make bad decisions, said legislators. Now
women who'd like to terminate a pregnancy will be subjected to mandatory
vaginal scans and forced to view fetal porn videos. Want to reduce
credit default swaps? Before they make another risky bet, let's force
traders to slap on a gown, step in those stirrups, and subject
themselves to a mandatory scan of their stock portfolios, while watching
American Casino or Plunder or listening to the live,
panicked heartbeat of manipulated mortgage owners.
Regulators need to remember that even the die-hardest conservative's
OK with some regulation. If it's good enough for the women of Oklahoma,
it's good enough for Wall Street. Right?
