WSJ: FOR BANKERS, MATH IS HARD!

The editorial page of The Wall Street Journal apparently doesn't like the proposed new financial reforms:

Congress and the Treasury have been forced to peel back their financial reform ambitions, which is some cause for relief. But not nearly enough, because their plan for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency would still unleash 50 state attorneys general to harass America's banks. Think Eliot Spitzer, without the self-restraint.

Hmmm, Spitzer, but more so. OK -- and the downside is ... ?

Ah, but this is the Journal editorial page, so we're expected to shed a tear for money people:

...the Frank-Obama proposal still contains the Treasury's not-so-bright idea to require all banks to comply with national rules, plus a different set of regulations in each state where they operate. The regulatory possibilities are endless, starting with the fact that each state could impose different rules for pricing, product features, repayment schedules, bank capital requirements, consumer disclosure, regulatory reporting requirements, and so on. If each state can set its own rules, expect endless legal confusion over which law prevails when a bank in one state serves a customer in another.

Oh, my goodness -- "confusion"! "Confusion" will make bankers' heads hurt! We can't possibly expect our financial system to function if it contains any "confusion"! "Confusion" will crash bankers' primitive computers, and no one connected to the world of finance is brainy enough to devise a way, technological or otherwise, to cope with all the "confusion"!

After all, the people who handle our money are simple country folk who -- especially in the past decade or so -- have become accustomed to dealing strictly in down-to-earth, back-to-the-land items like collateralized debt obligations:





How do you expect these humble Norman Rockwell types to cope with the supersubtle work of the most brilliantly evil geniuses of our time -- state legislators?