DC - More Smoke and Mirrors from Wonderland

The AP reports the Senate Banking Committee is hashing out the details for a new consumer protection agency to handle things like credit cards and mortgages and to put it in the Federal Reserve.

It is things like this that prove to me almost daily what a good idea it has been not to go back to DC. I was born there in 1950, moved to the suburbs at age four and left the area at 17 to go to UVa. Except for a 13 months working in the Nixon administration and a few visits on government business in the Reagan years, I haven't been back.

The place reminds me of nothing so much as Lewis Carrol's fictional Wonderland - full of self-important people saying meaningless things which they think are pearls of profound wisdom.

All this high level palaver is supposed to make us safe form another financial crisis of the sort that took these worthies by surprise in 2008. A crisis that had been predicted by more serious and sensible observers for years.

Who, in their right mind and possessed of the relevant historical facts. can possibly believe that the crisis was in any way related to a deficiency of power at the Federal Reserve?

If those on Capitol Hill want to see the source of the mess we are still struggling with, I suggest they look in a mirror.