Dave wrote:
On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:14:44 -0400, Gogarty said:

Yep. All five SOUND banks. Used to be 15,000 individual banks in the USA. They
were kept honest by their local regulators and since the '30s were forbidden
to be investment banks. In many states, i.e., Texas and Illinois, they were
not even permitted to have branches and a stand-alone ATM was considered a
branch.It worked just fine. But the ABA finally prevailed on the Republicans
to repeal Glass/Steagall, lots of other stuff went by the board (boat
reference) and the rest is disaster. You can quibbble about the details but
that's the long and the short of it.

You have the kernels of some correct ideas here. But most of it is nonsense
so far as the current crisis is concerned.


Of particular interest to you Dave: One of the reasons cited by the
World Economic Forum for rating Canada as having the soundest banking
system in the world was that we have very stringent government
regulation of banks and their practices. Ummm food for thought,,,
maybe sometimes government oversight can be a good thing?

Cheers
Martin