Now that this modest health insurance reform bill has passed - and all credit to Speaker Pelosi for it - let us turn to the re-regulation of banks. It is obvious to all of us on Planet Normal that bank deregulation gave people of ordinary greed and stupidity the chance to turn a recession into a slide to the knife edge of world financial collapse. We need to return to financial regulation not because bankers are more stupid and venal than average, but because they are exactly as stupid and venal as average and so too unreliable to operate without public oversight. Financial regulation should be Obama's next domestic priority.
In addition to the wisdom of the policy itself, the effort will produce the pleasing spectacle of the Republicans going into the November elections loudly defending both the health insurance industry AND Wall Street banks. I can't wait.