A little quiz to brighten your Monday morning. Since we all have the attention span of insects at this point, I’ll make it just one question.
Q: It’s one year after Wall Street teetered on the brink and just about fell off into the abyss. At the time, it was recognized that there were significant, systemic problems in the banking business that had led to the collapse.
Today Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the U.S. has failed to fix these underlying problems. “In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” he told Bloomberg. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.” President Obama is making a speech calling for new rules to prevent another meltdown in the economy. Will he prevail, with new regulations and rules that limit the size of banks and the exposure of our economy to another, perhaps worse, catastrophic failure? Select one:
a. Of course. We’ve learned a lot and many responsible people in the financial sector will put self-interest behind the welfare of our nation. Ha ha ha.
b. It’s all a bunch of hooey. Free markets that benefit those in charge of them are the way to go.
c. Leave me alone. I’m too busy reading reports from security analysts on how I’m going to invest my money for the next six minutes.
d. I think they should take all gloomy economists and make them go to Pittsburgh. No, wait! They’re doing that already!
e. Badges? We don’t want no stinking badges.
f. All of the above.
There are no right answers. Just tell me what you think. Hurry. And make it inspiring, willya? I tend to believe the last thing I read.
