I am a big fan of the law of unintended consequences.
My thoughts on Michael Covel’s article: you can’t legislate away human nature, true, but if you define and enforce penalties for criminal behavior, you can decrease its occurrence. It is part of human nature to be deferred by harsh penalties. We’ve seen a lot of fraud go un-prosecuted and even rewarded recently. As long as this persists, it is human nature that the human behavior will continue.
This is where good legislation vs. bad legislation comes in, and real law enforcement (rarely spotted in the financial kingdom) vs. non-enforcement makes a difference. – Ilene
Oh I Feel So Safe Back in the Arms of Our Dear Leaders!
We will see the law of unintended consequences arrise from this:
“[Senator] Dodd’s 1300-plus page proposal includes a laundry list of items: a new consumer financial protection agency, new supervision of hedge funds and derivatives trading, a reshuffling of banking industry regulators, investor protection, new federal authority to handle too-big-to-fail financial firms meant to limit taxpayer bailout funds and the creation of a systemic risk council as part of an early warning system.”
Kids, repeat after me and tap your ruby red slippers three times: you can’t legislate away human behavior, you can’t legislate away human behavior, you can’t legislate away human behavior…Followed by: bigger bubbles will follow, bigger bubbles will follow, bigger bubbles will follow…
Seriously, doesn’t it appear the United States federal government is attempting to strap a diaper on all of us? I get the idea of a diaper’s job, but guess what: When everyone shits away it might not hit the floor, but it will still smell awful — diaper or not.
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