May 24, 2011
I'm writing because my family and I were affected by the economic collapse of 2008, and we don't want it to happen again.
Wall Street greed and outrageous pay practices were a major cause of the collapse. One way to change the incentives so they don't collapse our economy again would be for regulators to use a *safety index* for incentive compensation, instead of a profit index.
Currently, most bankers receive stock options. So if they can generate more profits, the stock price goes up, and their options become more valuable.
Instead, what if they used the bank's bond price, which measures the overall ability of the bank to repay its own debt? Another measure of bank stability is the spread on credit default swaps (the insurance-like policies that are essentially bets, where one gambler bets with another that a particular firm will fail). The closer a bank comes to failing (such as in failing to pay of its bond debt), the bigger the spread on credit default swaps.
The bankers committed fraud while selling their packages as AAA value. President Reagan put more than a 1000 people in prison for fraud like this after they attempted to practice SNL deregulation. This should be what is done now.
They deregulated several Banking restrictions and look what happened. Re-regulate. Glass/Steagal should be reenacted and enforced, and all the other regulations.
The bail out should have gone to the people of the US not a few banks and bankers but the many. Then we would have seen a recovery.
Thank you for considering my comment,
jeanna gollihur