WHAT REALLY COUNTS

You are still out there!  I received a number of really nice welcome back notes this morning for which I am really grateful!  Thanks so much!

With one was the question, "why do you hate Tarullo so much and does he really matter?"  Well, I don't hate him at all.  Hardly know him.  For all I know he is nice to his kids and small animals.  He is very well educated and very intelligent. He hates banks...especially big banks...and he hates bankers which carries some understanding, but like his promulgator he is a thug and as such is a very stupid man.  Consider.

Dodd/Frank created the position of a governorship which would be in charge of regulation.  This seat should be filled by Presential appointment but Il Duce never moved on the issue.  Why.  Danny was his and Lizzy's guy but they knew that there wasn't a chance in hell he would be confirmed because everybody hated him...including a bunch of Democrats.  But despite by denied a de juries role he took the responsibilities on de facto, causing not only a break with the banking system but a break within the Federal Reserve as well which has done great disservice and caused the loss of many fine regulators across the country and especially in New York.  We have not emerged better from his presence.

Perhaps the result of his leaving will be seen later this year in the next round of the famous "stress test" when the results appear.  Keep in mind there were always two tests; an objective one and a subjective one.  The former?  No problem.  You either hit the numbers or you didn't.  But the latter?  Well to begin, you didn't even know what the questions were...they were all in Big Danny's head and if he liked you and what you were doing you passed;  if he didn't.........

He was a thug, and ruled like a thug.  There was never a question that he just hated Citigroup.  There was never a question that he loved Wells Fargo.  One was a multinational financial institution (BAD!) whilst the other was a jumped up savings bank (GOOD!).  The fact that Wells turned out to be the biggest bunch of predatory bastards around was neither good for his pschy or his career I suspect, but the real problem was the new regime in which it would to be almost impossible to do what the raison d' etre of his mission: the allocation of credit in accordance with political objectives.   Bye, bye Danny.  As I said, no tears are being shed.

And what will we see later in the year?  Hopefully a slight relaxation of the rules under which the industry does business and perhaps a revisiting of what we are to do with what I believe to be the under-supervision of the shadow system and particularly the hedge funds which have found it increasingly difficult to make money in their traditional business have become to branch out into area in which they have no expertise. The big banks at the stage are over capitalized at this point...Citicorp to a fault...and it's about time shareholders--of which I am  a very small one--get some of that wasted cash back.  Does one guy leaving really matter?  Yeah it does.  And that's my rant for the week.