A Somber Anniversary: Firing Line

The president flew to New York to mark an important anniversary a couple of days ago. It was the wrong one.

With the previous and current week full of poignant anniversaries, talking heads and politicians are asking the same rhetorical question: Have we learned anything?

The obvious answer? No.

The president chose the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros. to scold the financial industry and pat the administration on the back for averting a Depression. He pressed for increased regulation and warned that the industry was returning to its old habits, and he claimed that "too big to fail" is not going to be the policy moving forward.

But his calls for regulation are falling on deaf ears. Washington is bogged down in larger battles, and the momentum to reform the industry has stalled. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. There obviously needs to be reform, but it needs to be targeted, as I have called for with health care. The administration continues to fish with hand grenades instead of going after specific problems.

There are always going to be idiots, snakes and people who want to make a quick buck. No amount of regulation can prevent this. The government missed the largest fraud in our nation's history, even as people in the industry provided it with solid evidence.

This is the same government that helped cause the financial implosion by putting people into homes they couldn't afford with the Community Reinvestment Act, and predatory lenders were only too happy to comply. And the obvious government backstop for Fannie Mae(FNM Quote) and Freddie Mac(FRE Quote) only boosted their misdeeds.