What Obama-Geither-Summers SHOULD be doing

Bur aren’t actually doing, and probably never will be doing, with financial system reform, is thoroughly parsed and explained by Sandy B. Lewis and William D. Cohan. Here’s your pull quote:

Instead of hauling out the new drywall to cover up the existing studs, let’s seriously consider ripping down the entire structure, dynamiting the foundation and building a new system that rewards taking prudent risks, allocates capital where it is needed, allows all investors to get accurate and timely financial information and increases value to shareholders and creditors.

Instead of what?

Instead of what’s actually being done:

Six months ago, nobody believed that our banking system was well designed, functioning smoothly or properly regulated — so why then are we so desperately anxious to restore that model as the status quo? Nearly every new program emanating these days from the Treasury Department — the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Public Private Investment Program, the “stress tests” of major banks — appears to have been designed to either paper over or to prop up a system that has clearly failed.

Lewis and Cohan, as they detail, want the Obama Administration to promote both more market AND consumer discipline, more economists on his team who have “been in the trenches,” and, belying yet another Obama lie, more transparency.

Finally, they want almost the equivalent of the clamored-after torture investigation, re major banks and other financial institutions.