No Apparent Rush on Banking Reforms: Today's Outrage

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- How slow can we go? I'm sorry, but putting new global banking requirements in place by the end of 2012 doesn't sound like a rush order to me.

Here it is one year after the fall of Lehman Brothers and the rescue of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America (BAC) and all those trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts doled out to rescue Citigroup (C), AIG (AIG), Wells Fargo (WFC), JPMorgan(JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), etc, etc.

So we've already lost a year and now we're talking about another two years before anything is in place.

That's why I can't get too excited about the report from TheStreet's Dan Freed this morning about the tough talk from the Treasury that came out late last night.

I know Dan is right that based on historical norms, a two-year deadline is an aggressive timetable to agree on and implement new global requirements for bigger capital cushions at banks to prevent a repeat of the credit crunch that we're all still living through.

But come on, these are extraordinary circumstances that require extraordinary effort. We should be able to get something done faster.

By the time 2012 rolls around, we may not even care anymore. The impetus will be gone, the pain will be forgotten and the world may just let it all slide until the next banking crisis emerges and everyone blames each other for doing nothing the last time.