Regulate

While today's masters of the universe balk at regulation to rein in Wall Street and the big banks, prominent seers of the old guard propose a sensible return to how it used to work before Reagan and the Republicans cut them loose to gamble with our money. Elder statesmen like George Soros, Nicholas F. Brady, John S. Reed, William H. Donaldson and John C. Bogle all support regulation now, "and they may surprise you with their populism," as the New York Times reports today.

Robbery

"For years, Wall Street CEOs have thrown away customer trust like so much worthless trash," writes Harvard law professor and TARP overseer Elizabeth Warren in today's Wall Street Journal. "Banks and brokers have sold deceptive mortgages for more than a decade," Warren charges. "Financial wizards made billions by packaging and repackaging those loans into securities. And federal regulators played the role of lookout at a bank robbery, holding back anyone who tried to stop the massive looting from middle-class families. When they weren't selling deceptive mortgages, Wall Street invented new credit card tricks and clever overdraft fees."

How now brown cow?

"When the history of the Great Recession is written, they can be singled out as the bonus babies who were so short-sighted that they put the economy at risk and contributed to the destruction of their own companies," Warren concludes. "Or they can acknowledge how Americans' trust has been lost and take the first steps to earn it back."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.