Gall Street

From the Wall Street Journal: "Unfinished Business for Wall Street's 'Death Panel'" by David Weidner

Wall Street is dead. Long live Wall Street.In the next few weeks the media will begin recounting the great implosion of a year ago. We will watch, read and hear again how an economic "death panel" led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson denied aid to flawed firms such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. while companies such as American International Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. were kept alive through extraordinary means.
Many of the postmortems will take as a given the idea that Wall Street has somehow changed. Many will argue that it's a less risky place today, more regulated and humbled. Firms are bracing for the raft of rules coming from Washington. Investment banks must now behave like doddering commercial banks. A dozen CEOs and thousands of employees have been shown the exits.

We will be told, as we have been, that Wall Street as we know it ended in September 2008.
Were it true, we might be on onto something like a new financial system that holds risk takers -- not the ordinary Americans who have been battered by decimated housing values, retirement accounts and lost jobs -- accountable for their mistakes.

In retrospect, the great upheaval of last fall may not have been severe enough.

Casino EthosRecent evidence suggests not only has Wall Street survived, but it is essentially unchanged. The casino ethos is alive and well in the record value-at-risk numbers at some firms and the hand-wringing at rivals that temporarily short-leashed trading desks and suffered lower profits as a result. Bonuses are rising and banks are hiring again to capture gains in the volatile commodities and other speculation-fueled markets.

There is plenty of empirical and statistical evidence, but it only reflects the root of the problem: Wall Street's rising resentment toward critics and its unabashed defense of greed over safety.Back in the salad days before the financial meltdown, when credit was cheap and profit growth defied gravity, the biggest issue facing Wall Street was the high cost of complying with regulations. The cause was taken up by such champions as the then-head of the New York Stock Exchange, John Thain, Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and the industry itself through its lobbying arm, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

SIFMA, which helped eliminate NYSE's regulation of some firms and brokers, is railing against regulations again. This time, the association is protesting surprise audits proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC has proposed the audits as a way to combat potential Ponzi schemes such as the one run by Bernie Madoff. SIFMA claims the audits could cost some firms up to $282,800.But it's not just SIFMA. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., has articulated Wall Street's resentment for the aid given by taxpayers and Washington by complaining about the government's heavy-handed approach.
Mr. Dimon, who claims his bank never needed the $25 billion it returned to the government in June, seems to have forgotten the government's aid to his firm in the purchase of Bear Stearns Cos. and Washington Mutual Inc. last year, not to mention its aid to the banking industry in the crisis, which certainly would have leveled J.P. Morgan had the government not stepped in and backed Wall Street with the nation's credit.Selective Amnesia

Mr. Dimon's criticism seems to have emboldened more, shrill voices such as Richard Bove, the bank industry analyst at Rochdale Securities, who apparently slept through the past 18 months based on how he began his Aug. 6 research note.

"There is a movement in this country to fine, tax, and regulate success in the financial industry," Mr. Bove wrote. "I do not like it."

Arguing bailout cash "was borrowed in the open market and not taken from taxpayer funds" and that "the industry may have been able to handle its problems" had the government not stepped in, Mr. Bove, who speaks for many on Wall Street, seems to believe the bailout didn't carry the baggage of moral hazard that many believe will encourage firms to take risk. In addition, he argues fines, taxes and regulation curtail our financial competitiveness overseas.

Many would argue that fines punish wrongdoers, taxes pay for investor protections and regulation keeps our markets safe and functioning, giving us a competitive advantage -- the reputation for fair and open markets.

Mr. Bove's brand of backlash isn't the only signal that Wall Street is trucking along with selective amnesia. The controversial practice of high-frequency trading and the rabid defense of its practitioners is a threat to investors' fragile trust in fair markets. Banks continue to move slowly in recognizing and shedding problem assets -- again hoping the problems will just go away just as the CEOs of Lehman and AIG hoped during the summer of 2008.

If it feels like déjà vu all over again, it's because nothing has really changed. The thing about the government-run death panel is not that it put some of these firms out of their misery, it's that it let those carrying the disease live. (source Wall Street Journal)