Too Big To Fail. Not To Big To Break The Rules.

There's been a lot of talk about the JPMorgan Stanley deal where they lost $2 billion in high risk trading. I got an email from one person who used a candy store as an analogy. Remember JPMS had about a 17 billion profit. So $2 billion is a little more than 10% of that. Okay, let's use that. If I work for a candy store and I steal one tenth of the candy from that store, and nothing is done to me, I'm, maybe scolded, but that's all, what's to stop me from doing it again? And that would drive up the price of candy for everyone, a situation of grave importance. Wouldn't you think the government should need to step in and pass some laws to stop people from stealing candy? In fact they have already done that. I would have broken the law and I would be forced to pay the consequences. Well, shouldn't the same principles be applied to JPMorgan and others? Is there all that much difference between the two? The traders did virtually the same thing that helped cause the Great Recession. So Congress passed legislation to make it safer to invest. No more stealing candy, no more high risk gambling with OPM, other peoples money. Now you could say that it was JPMorgan's money, but if it upsets the markets, then it affects all investors. Just like stealing that candy drove up the price of candy. It's time to stop rewarding the Lone Rangers of society for cheating. The rules say everybody has to play by the same rules. What's unfair about that? Bankers claim it will cause them to spend more money and time to comply with the rules. Maybe so, but they're the ones that brought this on themselves. They've been complaining that they can and will self regulate themselves. If this is an example of self-regulation, I think we need the government to do the regulating. So they say the government doesn't know what they're doing. I say the banks do know what they're doing, and that's the problem.