You know I support the OWS eviction from Zuccotti Park, but this is good. What if the Mayor of New York had evicted the bankers from the public square instead of the Occupy people, then issued a statement explaining his actions? Excerpt from a thought experiment:

During the operation this morning, the bankers were told that they could return to the economy after it had been thoroughly cleaned, which it has not been since the 1930s. They were informed, however, that they could not bring their exotic financial instruments with them. As for instruments removed today by the Sanitation Department, these are being held at the Manhattan District 7 Garage on West 56th Street between 11^th and 12^th Avenues and may be recovered on presentation of proof of ownership and a valid bank debit card.

Well said. Seriously, if we fall into another Great Depression, I hope every single politician, Republican and Democrat, who participated in the Clinton-Bush let-banks-run-wild deregulatory spree — the one that threw out Glass-Steagall, the one that saw the SEC allow the five big banks (but them alone) take on massively more debt without adequate capitalization — is thrown out of office, and that whoever takes their place will rebuild out of the ruins by putting in place a system that regards these speculators with the strictness, indeed with the ruthlessness, that they deserve.

Did you know about the 2004 SEC rule change to which I refer? Look:

On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.

They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.

The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr.Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary.

A lone dissenter — a software consultant and expert on risk management — weighed in from Indiana with a two-page letter to warn the commission that the move was a grave mistake. He never heard back from Washington.

One commissioner, Harvey J. Goldschmid, questioned the staff about the consequences of the proposed exemption. It would only be available for the largest firms, he was reassuringly told — those with assets greater than $5 billion.

“We’ve said these are the big guys,” Mr. Goldschmid said, provoking nervous laughter, “but that means if anything goes wrong, it’s going to be an awfully big mess.”

Because of the rule change, Bear Stearns, for example, was allowed to take on $33 of debt for every $1 in capital it had. The SEC, then led by former Rep. Christopher Cox, a Bush appointee, forgot everything he learned in Sunday school about original sin, and trusted the banks to regulate themselves. From the NYT story:

Mr. Cox dismantled a risk management office created by Mr. Donaldson that was assigned to watch for future problems. While other financial regulatory agencies criticized a blueprint by Mr. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, that proposed to reduce their stature — and that of the S.E.C. — Mr. Cox did not challenge the plan, leaving it to three former Democratic and Republican commission chairmen to complain that the blueprint would neuter the agency.

In the process, Mr. Cox has surrounded himself with conservative lawyers, economists and accountants who, before the market turmoil of recent months, had embraced a far more limited vision for the commission than many of his predecessors.

The Republican economic stewardship of this country has been a disaster. I don’t see any other way to regard it. But it must be remembered that the Democrats bought into this too, starting with the Clinton administration. Recall that Robert Rubin and Larry Summers led the charge to shut up Brooksley Born in the late 1990s, when she warned about the time bomb that was the unregulated derivatives market. Is it really the case too that the Obama Administration, in which Tim Geithner is the principal economic adviser, is remotely as strict on the banks as it should be? To be fair to Obama, one can only re-regulate if it’s politically possible. The Senate, you’ll recall, voted down in 2010 a proposal to outlaw naked credit default swaps, the most dangerous kind. Every Republican voted against the proposal, and some Democrats as well.

For the record, I hope too that in the case of Depression, any politician of either party who has any serious responsibility for carrying water for Fannie and Freddie — I’m thinking especially of you, Barney Frank — should be held accountable. Actually this should happen whether or not there is a Depression, but I’m thinking that only a total crash will provoke the American people to purge the rottenness from the system.

The problem we all face right now is: what’s there to choose from? Both sides are so compromised. I do not expect that the GOP is capable of fielding a candidate who will take on the banks. I would vote for a Democratic Congressional candidate in a heartbeat if he or she had a serious plan for dealing with the banksters and fixing the system, and the backbone to see it done. But that candidate would have to stand up to the ruling class in his or her own party. Good luck with that.