Economic Calamity Commission

THAIRISH asks in Free For All Friday:

"Do we think there ought to be an Economic Calamity Commission? Some august body of bipartisan investigators to determine 'Who shot John?'

I think so. For the sake of argument, let's say the Ridiculous Bill gets passed. It just addresses the symptoms. Where is the list of root causes (not just articles by various authors) and prescriptive fail-safes to help make sure that this does not happen again?

Our economic ship has run aground. We are trying to right it again, but what is going to keep the Brooksley Born's from being shouted down or the Harvey J. Goldschmid's from being ignored? What about the command climate needs to be changed? If we don't change those problems, this will all happen again.
Senator McCain called for this commission back during the campaign, but we haven't heard boo about it since. We are making a grave mistake if we don't ask "why?" until we get to the bottom of it.

How about...when the Dow starts to exhibit sustained above average growth in certain sectors, let's take a closer look at what is going on.
How about setting up modified trading curbs that address developing bubbles?

This commission could address all of these issues.

I should point out that one of those guilty of ignorning Mrs. Born's admonitions about unregulated derivative markets is the new head of the National Economic Council. This makes sense. You helped lay the groundwork for the current debacle, so we are going to make you clean up the mess. Kind of like in the Navy. The OOD doesn't call the Captain and doesn't listen to CIC's recommendation and the ship runs aground. Does said OOD get anything other than canned? I don't think so.

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Two separate issues here...one, a commission to study the problem, its root causes, and make recommendations to keep from happening again. Two, a control mechanism for the markets.

I have no problem with the first idea, as it would be nice to see some Democrat oxes gored...though we would all have to be aware of the blowback on Republican policies too (like the "ownership society")

As for the second, don't we already have bodies that do this? The SEC? The Treasury Department? The Congress? The CFTC? The answer is we do, and they simply didn't do their jobs very well in the case of this latest recession. I have no faith that the creation of yet another body of this kind will have any real impact.