Volcker urges extended role for Fed

Source: FT

"Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, said on Tuesday that the Fed's role as bank regulator and lender of last resort should be permanently and formally extended to include investment banks."

Is there anything else you'd like on the side - may be privatization of the social security funds ??? It's really smart that the federal reserve should be giving all the speculators money to make any and all bets and help cover for them. Totally absurd proposition from a really smart person. Investment banks can go talk to their investors and explain how they plan to protect their interests and do a proper job and show they can - the federal reserve can become a seperate private entity and support the investment banks but no public tax payer funds to be used. If social security funds were involved it would have been shut down in 2008 and not 2041 as planned (all of the money would have been just blown away in the subprime investment vehicles).

"Unless the Fed's initiative can somehow be contained to a single aberrant incident - which seems quite unlikely - a direct responsibility for oversight and regulation follows. "

There is always a way to correct mistakes of the past - we don't just have to live with them all the time.