WSJ: Clash Looms on Banks

Choosing between Cong. Barney Frank’s let-the-Federal-Reserve regulate all banks legislation and Sen. Chris Dodd’s let’s-establish-a-new-regulator legislation is really a pick-your-poison choice. Both proposals presume that the free market should not be free, both presume that bureaucrats and politicians should supersede the free choices of consumers and investors, and neither proposal finds any basis in the Constitution. The Frank proposal puts most regulatory power into the hands of the super-secretive Fed, whose ways are essentially unknown and unknowable, while the Dodd proposal puts all regulatory power into the hands of a new bureaucracy. The Dodd proposal (a copy of which has not yet been released) purports to strip the Federal Reserve of some regulatory authority that it already has. If this were to pass, it would be the first time since 1913, when the Monster from Jekyll Island was born, that the government has actually taken power away from it.