What Would You Say...Ya Do Here?

The New Yorker has a decent piece that summarizes our joke of a regulatory system:

These failures weren’t accidents. They were the all too predictable result of the deregulationary fervor that has gripped Washington in recent years, pushing the message that most regulation is unnecessary at best and downright harmful at worst. The result is that agencies have often been led by people skeptical of their own duties. This gave us the worst of both worlds: too little supervision encouraged corporate recklessness, while the existence of these agencies encouraged public complacency.

The obvious problems of graft and the revolving door between government and industry, in other words, were really symptoms of a more fundamental pathology: regulation itself became delegitimatized, seen as little more than the tool of Washington busybodies.

I really don't think that regulation itself is seen as illegitimate simply because it's imposed by government. What is seen as illegitimate is any obstacle that impedes their supposed right to make enormous profits at the expense of any modicum of corporate social responsibility or ethics. Never mind that mine shaft isn't getting any ventilation - proper safety measures would be too costly. The blowout preventer is a shell of what it should be? Forget that - $500,000 is way too steep to install a proper countermeasure, and nothing could possibly go wrong. We're leveraging ourselves to the the hilt and selling shit securities that we know are worthless? No big deal - we've got short-term gains, and the US taxpayer will clean up the mess.

Installing competent regulators with a legal framework that actually has some teeth would be a start. But nothing will ever change until there is a wholesale reversal in the culture of these corrupt organizations, and that isn't likely to happen soon, if ever. And why should they change? There is simply zero incentive for them to do so. They have Congress bought and paid for, who continue to push the bull shit notion that the way to economic prosperity is to allow industry and the free market to DWTFTW. And when their bloodlust for cash finally causes an explosion, an oil spill, an economic implosion, all they have to do is take their seats in front of Congress, say they didn't see it coming, face no criminal or civil penalties, and they're back in business by Monday morning.

I'll eat my words if we ever see any heads roll for the financial crisis or the Gulf oil spill. But I'm not holding my breath.