Here's what everybody in this conversation seems to be overlooking: If it's going to cost banks $2 trillion or $14 trillion or $30 trillion to cover their own bets, then they shouldn't be making those bets. Because the next time bankers get their bets wrong -- which they have powerful economic incentives to do -- we're going to have another financial crisis.
We dodged an enormous bullet in 2008, when the entire global economy nearly crashed. And I mean, really crashed.
It's true that millions of people around the country, and around the world, are still trapped in the wreckage of the last crisis. But a global depression would be much, much worse -- for them, and for everyone. If bankers are really making $30 trillion in bets which they can't cover, they must be stopped now.
That's what's at stake -- this year, and in the years to come. What's worse: That, or a little paperwork for bankers? They have their answer, of course. They'd still have their bank accounts. But the rest of the planet's population would be living through a tragedy not of its own making.
Like a lot of other people, I've repeatedly been frustrated, disappointed and even infuriated by the way our government has treated Wall Street over the last four years. I'm painfully aware that Dodd-Frank only does a little to fix our broken financial system.
But when you're staring down the barrel of a global catastrophe, a little can suddenly seem like a lot.
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