Wall Street reform clears Congress

Although I’m not a fan of government intervention into our lives, the recent financial crisis in America underscores the importance of having an entity looking out for the public safety of our retirement plans and monetary system.  In this country we’ve had several financial crisis dating back to the Great Depression which started largely in part due to banks emptying their vaults in order to loan money, create profits and award bonuses, completely ignoring reserves they were supposed to hold back in the event a depositor actually wanted their money.

Flash ahead to the 80′s financial S & L crisis, and now the banking system crippled by activity that most of us (including myself) had no idea what was going on.  The flipside of capitalism is the insidious deceit that evolves in the name of maximizing profits.  Profits are good, honest profits are better….in the long run.  Legal profits are one thing, honesty and integrity are another.  For example, it’s not illegal to have an illicit affair on your spouse…but it certainly is not honest and calls into question one’s integrity.  So here we have a banking system, finding loopholes, engaging in extremely risky behavior, and deceitful behavior in order to maximize profits, share value, and generate wealth for themselves.  Again, wealth is not a bad thing, I’m all for it, but do it the right way without putting your customer’s financial well being in jeopardy, which is exactly what the system did.

So while I will once again say I’m not an advocate for big government involvement in our lives, I will say I’m glad we have a system where at least enough of our representatives saw clearly enough and avoided the great lobbying that took place to defeat this bill, and voted to protect our retirement savings and our ability to ensure a solid financial picture for future generations, save all the spending that’s going on, which is a completely different post…not to be covered here.

Read the full story HERE.