In case you're wondering, the surge in views today is the result of a link from Greg Mankiw's blog. Yes, the Greg Mankiw who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2003-5 (Bernanke held the chair from 2005-6). Mankiw teaches at Harvard now, and he wrote two of the textbooks I used in college.
I'm all for bringing beatdowns to thieves, but we can't regulate our way out of recurrent banking panics. Look at what happened to Japan and Sweden in the early 90s. Or Iceland now. No laissez failure there. Inconsistent regulation is even worse than none at all.
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