In Dodd we trust

MANIFESTO

In discussing Chris Dodd's travails this morning, the Courant's Stan Simpson pretty much puts his finger on what ails US government in general:

Time for a new rule: If you're on the banking committee, particularly if you're the chairman, you are prohibited from taking campaign money from the companies that you regulate—no matter how small the amount.

Of course, this shouldn't apply only to the Banking Committee and its chair. Too many committee chairmen, of particularly the last eight years, have been so cozy with the industries they're supposed to oversee that the relationship has been virtually incestuous. It looks like the hardly squeaky clean Chris Dodd has been no different.

The larger problem, though, is that the whole notion of banking in the US has gone awry. Ever since the evisceration of the Glass-Steagall Act in the 1970s and 1980s, financial entities have been involved in all sorts of shenanigans—from the S&L meltdown of twenty years ago (which, of course, you-know-who was involved in) to the baseless mortgages of this decade. Thus, a suspect institution like Countrywide Financial (nee Countrywide Credit) can get involved in myriad shady financial dealings—including sweetheart loans to the chair of the Senate Banking Committee.