Really? So Bernanke's Fed, FDIC, etc - no one thought it was maybe a bad idea for these Banks to carry a debt ratio as high as 35:1

And Treasury? Oh wait - it was Hank Paulson that requested the debt ratio increase allowance.

They knew - and they all looked the other way. That is why we do not trust Bernanke and Geithner, the AIGs, the Goldman Sachs people and The Citigroups, etc.

This is one small bit of the panoramic picture, but I doubt the failure of government regulators was the real reason for the crisis. Congress simply cannot--as an institution--admit any sort of blame.

The Glass-Steagall Act from 1932 was repealed in 1999. Here's what the Library of Congress had to say about the reason for the original act: In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bankers and brokers were sometimes indistinguishable. Then, in the Great Depression after 1929, Congress examined the mixing of the “commercial” and “investment” banking industries that occurred in the 1920s. Hearings revealed conflicts of interest and fraud in some banking institutions’ securities activities. A formidable barrier to the mixing of these activities was then set up by the Glass Steagall Act."

This barrier was removed in 1999. This barrier needs to be revisited and perhaps revised to cover an insurance company (like AIG) who ventures into financial products, essentially investment. If there were difficulties with the original act in our modern world, then these need to be fixed. Apparently we've thrown out the baby with the bath water with this one.

The second issue is the unregulated derivatives market. Government doesn't regulate this market and so we rely on the after-the-fact cleanup. Enron had an energy derivatives market and now we're cleaning up another unregulated derivatives market. Congress needs to enact regulatory framework to cover this market.

The third issue Obama alluded to today--and that's to provide government with the tools needed when a company is rescued by the government to prevent economic chaos. We certainly have established law if bankruptcy occurs. We need new laws and new tools when the government intervention falls short of bankruptcy. This would allow the government to renegotiate any onerous contracts--like the retention contracts that have caused so much anxiety.

We are now reaping the whirlwhind of unthinking deregulation and a deadly reliance on the "free market". Alan Greenspan learned his lesson about the correction of the free market. It's time we relearned the same lesson.

Congress, get off your collective a$$es and get to work on these issues instead of pandering to a mob instinct. Don't be so damned worthless.

And who pushed thru the repeal of Glass Steagall? Phil Gramm the then head of the Senate Banking Committee with the compliance of Robert Rubin Clinton's Treasury Secretary. Nice work Phil. We're not a nation of whiners anymore, we're a nation of poor people.