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Comment by gcb0 | Hacker News Reader

because 2008 made out clear that no oversight works just fine.

those are laws to protect laws placed to protect banks et al long before. the original laws give some state insurance for a very cheap price, which can easily be abused if someone start a bank/union, give lots of loans to a partner and then crash said bank/union. ... which is exactly what the 2008 was about if you stop believing all banks were surprised by the crash...

edit: and yes, they fail mostly at bribes. nobody does business with any government without bribes. maybe he is not such an accomplished banker as he believed if he never got to that part. i know in construction you won't get far without it.

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I keep hearing this argument, 'no oversight', and I have yet to see proof of it. Finance remains the most heavily regulated industry, as it has for decades.

> Finance remains the most heavily regulated industry, as it has for decades.

I'm not trying to be pedantic if you were just speaking in hyperbole, but I'm curious on the methodology for determining that.

Both things are true. Finance is heavily regulated by at least a dozen agencies, but the coverage of those agencies has gaps, and significant overlaps where it's not clear who is supposed to be holding the ball.

To name two examples from the financial meltdown:

- Lending practices at banks are regulated by the Federal Reserve. Lending practices by mortgage brokers financed by i-banks and hedge funds were essentially unregulated. Those are where a lot of the bad loans and securities started.

- Derivatives are normally regulated by the CFTC, but credit default swaps were specifically exempted from that regulation in 2000, on the assumption that other federal regulators would cover the downstream risks under their purview (they did not).

> nobody does business with any government without bribes. maybe he is not such an accomplished banker as he believed if he never got to that part.

I personally consider banking and government in general to be fairly corrupt, but do you have any evidence that literal bribery is common?

Handing a bag of cash to someone isn't the way corruption at this level works. That happens with low level people, who trip up and get caught.

It's more a combination of favors, revolving door employment and consideration for friends and family.

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