How About Some Real Regulation of the Banksters?

One of the most disheartening aspects of political blogging is that one has to watch the train-wrecks after watching the powerful engines go haywire while everybody pretends that surely they will voluntarily stop before going off the tracks, that surely the engine-drivers know better than mere passengers, that surely we must not intervene with train traffic, because how would anything be transported then?

That is what happened with the financial markets. They broke themselves, mostly because nobody was regulating the eager banksters inventing new products and nobody bothered pointing out that credit default swaps were not exactly the same as insurance.

It's like a game of cards where people invent new rules as the game proceeds and nobody is allowed to point that out or enforce the initial rules.