sometimes regulations are for the good.

commercial banks provide checking & savings accts to regular folks like us and to small businesses. they provide mortgages & car loans to folks like us. they are the local banks and the larger, national banks, that we deal with every day for our banking needs.

investment houses are gambling institutions. investment houses take money from investors and place bets in the stock market - betting on which business will take off and prove to be good investments.

these two entities provide different services. one is a trust - a sacred trust - between the common man and the repository which holds his money. one is a casino. the problem comes when the casino gets rich and purchases the trust, takes the money held in trust, and uses it to gamble. if the gamble is lost, the trust is destroyed, and the common man loses his money.

and, he didn't even choose to gamble his money, nor did he know it was being gambled.

this is what happened in the great depression, and with no backup, many people were bankrupted through forces beyond their control. controls in the form of govt regulations were put in place, and commercial banking was officially separated from investment banking.

in 1996, pres clinton signed the national securities markets improvement act. this act repealed the regulations and allowed commercial banks to once again be merged with investment houses. time passed, and here we are in 2008, with lack of regulation and oversight due to clinton's enactment, leading us to another wall street crash. this crash was very similar to the crash that preceeded the great depression. the difference is that we are bailing out the banks this time.

these institutions must be held accountable. there must be oversight & regulation. there is too much temptation to greed. we should not expect the common man, much less the common corporation, to act for the greater good when faced with this type of temptation.

sometimes regulations are for the good.