Banking Law

A Plethora Of Political Incorrectness

Some days, when I'm especially pressed for time, I seriously consider bagging putting up a post. Then, out of the blue, my readers will supply me with material too good to pass on. Two recent examples beg for a post.

The first is a fairly common form of e-mail I receive from public relations flaks, who apparently supply reporters with pithy quotes from attorneys who seek to make their mark as "experts" of one sort or another. I hadn't considered hiring a public relations firm to push quotes on reporters, but then, I've earned my clients the old fashioned way: barratry and champerty. Even more disconcerting was the notion that any person possessed of even the most modest powers of perception would consider this blog a place where the authors might be interested in someone else's opinion. "Unfair and Unblanced" is our motto.

Nevertheless, I received such an e-mail today and decided to post the guts of it, rather than just dribble out individual quotes within the context of a substantive post. Hey, you want free publicity, here it is, unvarnished and without comment. Individual readers can peruse the following and decide for themselves as to its value.

BANK LAW EXPERT: THOUGHTS ON NEW REGULATIONS

Financial institutions law expert James Wheeler, a partner at the international law firm, says the Obama Administration is not shy about wanting to change the financial regulatory landscape, but says all the talk about regulating the banking industry is nothing new.

?This is very similar to what we heard in the mid-1970s and again in the early 1990s,? Wheeler says. ?Then, too, there were threats and talk from the federal government on how to regulate things better.?

What?s different this time, Wheeler says, is the severity and global nature of the current recession, as well as the wide-ranging impact it?s had all around the world.

?I hope any change made by the Obama administration is for the purpose of more-efficient regulation, rather than just more regulation for regulation?s sake,? Wheeler says.

The rumored nature of the new regulations is to have key federal agencies work together to avoid another perfect-storm collapse of the national financial system.  But Wheeler says a paralysis among the financial regulators, and a history of non-collaboration, are hurdles the administration must overcome.

?A lot of regulators are unsure what to do,? Wheeler says, ?they don't know where they?ll be next week, next month or next year, and that keeps them from moving forward.  Traditionally, federal banking regulators have not always played nicely together, which sometimes creates turf wars.?

Wheeler?s is concerned about the impact rule changes could have on federal thrifts (or savings associations), and other smaller banks and financial institutions.  A frequent rumor has the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), now overseen by the Treasury Department, being folded into the FDIC, the Federal Reserve or another national regulatory agency.

?Many people in the industry think moving the OTS would be a mistake,? Wheeler says. ?Small savings banks, and savings and loans, need baby steps toward change.  They don't need oversight by an organization that doesn?t always understand their needs.?

There you have it, folks. Straight-up, in-depth insight unlike the kind of snarky fluff you usually find on rags like Bank Lawyer's Blog. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, Mr. Wheeler's publicist says that he is available for interviews.

In another interesting e-mail, a reader from The Left Coast accused me of pushing a hidden homophobic agenda in my most recent mockery of Barney Frank. I tried and failed to get my head around the paradox of having concocted a rational plan (agenda) to push an irrational anxiety disorder (homophobia), but, then, I never claimed to be G.K. Chesterton. Still, I wish to clarify that I do, indeed, hate homosexuals, not because of their sexual orientation, but because I am a misanthrope. Homosexuals are members of either "mankind" or "womynkind" and, therefore, merely a subclass of a despised species, all of whose subclasses are mock-worthy, especially the subclass that consists of Blue State dwellers who awaken each morning convinced that the sun rose in the East for the sole purpose of shining through their bedroom windows and into their soft-lidded eyes just to piss them off, all at the instigation of Sarah Palin and her fellow creationist whack-jobs. To members of this subclass: I must exhort you to fine tune the rabbit ears on your tin foil hats and find another blog to offend you. You needn't search far. Hot house flowers will find almost any climate inhospitable to their delicate, politically correct, sensibilities.

The subclass of professional politicians, to which Barney Frank belongs, is also high on my list of the mock-worthy. It's not as target-rich a subclass as lawyers, but it's pretty darned close. Any aspect of Frank's sordid past is open season. Any aspect, from his notorious association with Stephen L. Gobie, who Frank paid for sex and who ran a prostitution ring out of Frank's apartment, to his recent branding of Justice Scalia as a "homophobe" (sound familiar?). This despicable human being is the head of the House committee on banking legislation. If the consequences of the gaping holes in the characters of men and women in his position and other leadership positions in Washington, D.C. weren't so serious for the country, he'd be a laughingstock. Instead, the fact that he's in a position of such power is potentially tragic. If you don't like my mocking clowns like Frank, again, I urge you: read elsewhere. The Internet is place filled with an infinite amount of white noise and you'll surely be able to find an echo chamber to your liking, a place where bloggers aren't so "mean."

Now that I've driven away more of the bootless and unhorsed, it's time to tell my more robust readers what really chaps my hide: short people. I also suffer from mycrophobia.

Have a nice day.

Full post as published by Bank Lawyers Blog on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).