A Nasty Surprise Buried Within FINREG

I read this morning's Wall Street Journal lead staff editorial concerning uber-liberal California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters' insanely stupid contributions to the FINREG bill now being hashed out in conference between the House and Senate.

Without going into too many details, Waters' is seeking to enshrine racial and gender preferences both in a new staff position in each region's Reserve bank, to be confirmed by the Senate, and, then, by extension, in the credit allocation policies each Reserve bank will implement.

In a related step, of which I was aware, one of the bills seeks to make the president of the NY Fed an administration appointee, thus removing more independence from the nation's central bank.

The most chilling part of the editorial was the passage citing Bernanke's Fed as instructing the Regional Fed banks to remain silent on Waters' legislation.

As the article noted, the mere appearance of the legislative changes to the Reserve banks in one house's version have been sufficient to muzzle the central bank.

This is not trivial. It's also why we don't want multi-thousand page, or even hundred-page bills being passed. Waters' ideas are toxic and stupid. Their passage will continue the nonsensical preferences with which Congress saddled Fannie and Freddie, to all of our regret and great expense.

This is one part of FINREG that has to be stopped. It wouldn't hurt if Waters could be given a new career, come November, either. That way, at least we'd be safe from her constant meddling in matters of which she displays no ability to actually understand.