“There’s no question the banking regulators blew it leading up to the [2008] financial crisis. And the problem is we’re gonna blow it again… Human societies are prone to mass delusion.’
Well, props for honesty, I guess. But it’s about the most transparency you’ll ever get from one of the most opaque institutions on the planet, the Federal Reserve.
Your editor was present last night as Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari held a ‘town hall’ meeting. Kashkari performs this exercise in public outreach every few weeks somewhere in the Fed’s sprawling District 9 – stretching from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula 1,400 miles west to Montana.
Kashkari saw the Panic of 2008 up close and personal. He was the Treasury Department’s point man for the bank bailouts. Since he began his current gig 18 months ago, he’s made it his mission to break up the big banks. We even cited his first speech on the job here in The 5: ‘I believe the biggest banks are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy.’
Heh. The contrast to Fed chair Janet Yellen couldn’t be more, umm, striking.
Hours before Kashkari held court last night, Yellen was speaking in London – declaring the banks are ‘very much stronger’ and another 2008-level crisis is unlikely to occur ‘in our lifetimes.’
This post was published at Wall Street Examiner on June 28, 2017.
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