On this board, no guillotine. We have the law as it stands and we need to amend the law to stop this stuff happening. But the problem is systemic. Individuals are not the problem. It is the way the whole structure was devised.
"The financial system has mutated into a doomsday machine where banks make their money by originating securities and sticking someone else with the risk. None of the reforms, beginning with Dodd-Frank and its European counterparts, has changed that fundamental business model.
The banks have created layers of impenetrable debt obligations. As long as nobody asks what these securities are really worth in the marketplace, the Ponzi scheme holds. But once creditors begin doubting whether the debts will be paid, an ostensibly well-capitalized firm like Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns can become insolvent overnight. Now entire countries are prisoners of a dysfunctional system of private finance.
Until our political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic muster the will to radically simplify the financial system and put an end to the game of pass the risk and reap the reward, we will be in chronic peril of financial collapse, in which governments and taxpayers are held hostage by banks."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/europe-on-the-brink_b_1027562.html
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