Obama's Bank Reforms: Asinine

Financial services analyst Tom Brown shares his thoughts on Obama's proposed bank "reforms."

On the one hand, the president wants to ensure that another financial crisis never happens again, and wants to tax banks to recoup the costs of TARP. But on the other hand, he wants banks to loosen their lending standards and make more loans. The uncertainty this contradiction has produced (not to mention the verbal jihad the president has inflicted on the banking industry) isn’t going to spur bankers to ease their lending standards. It will have the opposite effect. Taxing banks and trashing bankers will simply result in less lending, not more.

He also reminds us that the banks are now forced to pay the sins of the ludicrous bailouts that have been disasters - AIG, GMAC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac,...