The Bush’s Approach Of “Cutting The Red Tape” Financial Regulations Didn't Work Out Very Well.

This past week President Barrack Obama started taking the reasonable first steps to reinstate the old banking and financial regulations that were gutted over the years that had started with the Regan Administration.

The “New Deal” that Franklin Roosevelt promised the American people began to take shape immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs, work relief programs, and agricultural programs.



Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy as the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Kennedy was appointed to review, and propose laws to curb and reign in the unscrupulous acts of those who ultimately destroyed and crashed the financial markets at the time. After Franklin Roosevelt called Kennedy to Washington to clean up the Securities and Exchange Commission, somebody asked Roosevelt why he had tapped such a crook. "Takes one to catch one," replied Roosevelt.

Kennedy's reforming work as SEC Chairman was widely praised on all sides, as investors realized the SEC was protecting their interests. His knowledge of the financial markets equipped him to identify areas requiring the attention of regulators. One of the crucial reforms was the requirement for companies to regularly file financial statements with the SEC.

Since the Ronald Regan Administration, influential PACs have been pushing to remove and dismantle these exact same laws and regulations that Joseph Kennedy developed to protect the working men and women's retirement funds of this country. Now with most of these safeguards removed and what laws remained on the books, the prevalent viewpoint of the last eight years under the Bush / Cheney Administration was to just ignore and look the other way as any violations were going on.

Of course as if history could not have predicted it, we are now in our own crash of the financial markets again just like in 1929. Just like the old saying, “Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” As I see it, the correction of this current financial problems are to go back to the way it use to be by reinstating the laws and regulations that Kennedy knew worked and did for many years.