Gangster Banks Keep Winning Public Business. Why?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/gangster-banks-keep-winning-public-business-why-20120322
Why? Simple: it is anonymous tax payers that get screwed and in any case the politicians are corrupt. This is telling:
“I haven’t found an investment bank that hasn’t had some problem in the last three years,” California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said in a telephone interview. “We do business with them all. I think they provide good service. I think they’ve been highly ethical with us.”
This is coming from an official whose state, California, has seen multiple bid-rigging cases in recent years, from Riverside to San Mateo to Sacramento to Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, for starters. So a quote like that is pretty sad. It tells you that the system works fine for state officials and banks — and no one is representing the people who actually lose out.
It would be quite simple to create some sort of on-line Dutch Auction for these sorts of things and the whole thing could be managed for a flat fee (and a small one that that! I would be happy to do it for a few million a year!), all totally transparent and totally free from corruption. The tax payer would not be cheated yet horrifyingly Wall Street wouldn’t get huge fees for doing nothing.
Sadly, something like this has exactly zero chance of happening (but please feel free to make a fool out of me!), even if it somehow started to develop enough critical mass the banks _already_ own the politicians that would invent new road blocks, just like they did for the Postal Service.
