Milquetoast. Far-ranging and radical steps are needed to reign in a financial system run amok. The current financial system is arranged to benefit the financiers, not economic activity. "This country is moving to a world where we're no longer making anything," says John Bogle, founder of Vanguard. "We're merely trading pieces of paper, swapping stocks and bonds back and forth with one another, and paying our financial croupiers a veritable fortune."

Radical solutions are called for. The first is to replace the privately owned and operated Federal Reserve System with a publicly owned Central Bank. One needs only look at the Fed record to conclude it has been the culprit in the vast majority of the scandals, depressions, recessions and crisis over the last eighty years. They include but are not limited to the Depressions of 1921 and 1932 , the S&L crisis , the crash of '87 and 2001 and the current Subprime Crisis.

The second is stiff regulation. What happpened at CitiGroup? They employed the same off-balance sheet bookkeeping as Enron! It is only through tough regulation like Glass-Steagall that transparency can be enforced. We must reregulate. The SEC and FASB must be given the mandate to uphold the rule of law and not subject to the corruption of a Congress wed to the financial industry.

Our once admired and emulated financial system is now discredited and denounced. Only through sweeping financial and banking reform will we not face another financial debacle. Only through sweeping financial and banking reform will we regain any semblance of trust in our financial system.

Michael McKinlay

Hercules, CA