Washington and Wall Street: Best Kept Separate

Russ Roberts’ testimony in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is superb. Read it (it’s short). Wall Street deserves plenty of blame for the financial crisis. But Washington deserves more:

When your teenager drives drunk and wrecks the car, and you keep giving him a do-over—
repairing the car and handing him back the keys—he’s going to keep driving
drunk. Washington keeps giving the bad banks and Wall Street firms a do-over. Here are
the keys. Keep driving. The story always ends with a crash.

I’m mad at Wall Street. But I’m a lot madder at the people who gave them the keys to
drive our economy off the cliff.