CEOs At Congressional Hearing: "The System Has Not Fundamentally Changed"

I've been watching the congressional hearings with the Wall Street CEOs, and there was a very telling - if inadvertent - exchange that just took place. A House member from South Carolina asked whether the federal government handing over $8 trillion to Wall Street would fundamentally change the economy and the system and processes that brought us to this point of crisis. Bank of New York CEO Robert Kelly promptly responded by saying "the system has not fundamentally changed."

He meant this as a reassurance - as a way to comfort lawmakers that free-market capitalism is alive and well. But what he admitted was the opposite of reassurance. It was confirmation of what bailout opponents have been saying from the very beginning: namely, that the bailout is, indeed, a no-strings-attached, no-change-required handout to banks - one that hasn't mandated any "fundamental change" to the system that destroyed the economy.

If ever there was a time that we want the system to "fundamentally change," it is now, especially after an election where fundamental change was promised.

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