A few days ago I wrote about the financial consumer protection agency that the Obama Administration intends to create. This agency will regulate all credit card offers, all mortgage agreements, all checking accounts, and myriad other details of how ordinary citizens manage their finances. In fact, the government intends to automatically enroll people in retirements savings plans — I'm reminded of "anything that is not prohibited is mandatory."
Congreessman Barney Frank responded to criticism about the agency:
"The fear that this will somehow be an out-of-control entity ravaging the private sector is unsupported by anything in American history."I'm not certain what history books he's been reading, if any, but perhaps he should look back at the actions of Roosevelt's regulatory agencies; they had no trouble regulating every jot and tittle of financial transactions. Or, if that's too far in the past, perhaps Frank remembers from personal experience the wage-and-price control regulations during the Nixon administration and Carter's regulation of, among other things, thermostat settings in commercial office buildings. Once a goverment bureacracy begins to regulate, they regulate; after all, they are not being paid to not to issue regulations. Like any other animal without natural predators, they increase without limit and devastate their ecosystem.
