Yeesh!

I've been spending a lot more time recently reading financial blogs and sites than political, simply because the business side of my life picked back up. There's as much crap in the financial noise machine as in the political, and in my oh so humble opinion, a lot less useful, thoughtful, informative or insightful posting. I'm not going to draw conclusions (at least not where colleagues or co-workers might see them!)

However, that said, there's a lot of good stuff out there. One such is an article from Zack's that examines what has happened and why. Like much of the stuff on Zack's, it ultimately turns into a pitch to buy a report, sign up for a newletter, or other commercial drivel. In this case, thought, it does not render it any less insightful.

Basically, he notes that the repealing of Glass-Steagal and the passing of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act are the root of most of the problems. While he doesn't go so far as to call for a return to Glass-Steagal and extirpation of the CFMA (and Phil Gramm, too, PLEASE!), I will. We need to absolutely separate the banking and investing (and insurance) realms of the financial world from one another, or we'll be going through this every fifteen or twenty years.