Michael Lewis: 'The Ray Rice Video For The Financial Sector Has Arrived' - HuffPo

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'The Ray Rice Video For The Financial Sector Has Arrived'
The Huffington Post | By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 09/26/2014 10:28 am EDT Updated: 54 minutes ago

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We always pretty much knew that our banking regulators were captured by the industry they regulate, and now we apparently have proof.

"The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived," famous author and finance-explainer Michael Lewis declared on Friday morning. He was referring to a new report from ProPublica and This American Life about Carmen Segarra, a former New York Federal Reserve bank examiner who claims she was fired in 2012, after seven months on the job, for examining Goldman Sachs a little too aggressively.

It seems a safe bet, though, that this story won't have quite the same impact as the video of Ray Rice punching his wife unconscious in an elevator. And it may strike some as terrifically tone-deaf to compare the inner workings of banking to the horror of domestic violence. Still, Lewis's overall point holds: Here is the material proof of something we knew was happening all along.

Based on nearly 48 hours of secretly taped conversations among Fed officials and Goldman Sachs, the reports make a strong case that bank regulators are terrified of offending the banks they're regulating, exposing what Lewis calls their "breathtaking wussiness." This suggests that, despite the worst financial crisis since at least the Great Depression and financial reform that was supposed to put Wall Street on a shorter leash, regulators still bow to banks as much as they always have. That makes a future crisis seem even more likely, with banks still able to persuade regulators that they're not taking crazy risks.

The New York Fed, in a written response to ProPublica and This American Life, denied Segarra's accusations:

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Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/26/ray-rice-video-financial-sector_n_5887506.html?utm_hp_ref=business

The main story (DULink): http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025587497