Sunday, July 13, 2008

Policy Prudence (or Regulating Reasonability)

According to Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will run a successor institution, IndyMac Federal Bank FSB, starting next week, the Office of Thrift Supervision said in an e-mail yesterday."

First off, bank runs and successorship! How awesome is this economy?? Food banks are running out of food and people can't get their cash out of the bank! It's like "It's A Wonderful Life" meets the Great Depression meets a global food crisis!

But what I really wanted to note was that evidently we HAVE an Office of Thrift Supervision. This is, ostensibly, an office that is an expert at not-spending itself into irrelevance and futility. It may seem counterintuitive, but do you suppose we could, say, fund them more and have them be thrifty more than just in their own budget? Maybe they could generate thrift analysis reports! Maybe they could issue reports on the best days of the week to shop at Goodwill (which we'll all need sooner or later; see earlier remarks about bank runs).

My next mission in life: To become Comptroller of Sensibility for the Office of Thrift Supervision.

2 comments:

Matt said...

The Office of Thrift Supervision seems like something out of an Onion headline

"Office of Thrift Supervision ceases operations, saves $300,000 annually"

Chuck said...

I know, right? They're so effective at what they do, they can't do anything at all. Like a bureaucratic Ouroboros.