Regulation of Banks - Why Is It Done? JP Morgan Chase and Paul Krugman Give Us the Answer

This is such trite wisdom that it is always remarkable that only a handful of people seem to understand it, among them Paul Krugman at The New York Times in Why We Regulate, writing inter alia:

"Just to be clear, businessmen are human — although the lords of finance have a tendency to forget that — and they make money-losing mistakes all the time. That in itself is no reason for the government to get involved. But banks are special, because the risks they take are borne, in large part, by taxpayers and the economy as a whole. And what JPMorgan has just demonstrated is that even supposedly smart bankers must be sharply limited in the kinds of risk they’re allowed to take on."

Now, really, what economically savvy person can dispute that essential truth, regardless of their political persuasion?

German Right-Wing Loses State Parliament Election in North Rhine-Westphalia : Left-Wing Shows Clear Domination: Pirate Party Sends a Clear Message for the Future

The Socialists (SPD) in Germany thumped the Christian Democrats (CDU) in the state parliamentary election in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, garnering ca. 39% of the vote to ca. 26%, which reflected a ca. 4% gain for the Socialists and a sizzling ca. 8% loss for the Christian Democrats as compared to the previous election only two years previous. It is a stunning political blow for the right wing given the allegedly booming nature of the present German economy.

Nicholas Kulish has the story for the New York Times at In Rebuke to Merkel, Social Democrats Win German Vote - NYTimes.com, reporting of course that the path of austerity followed by the Merkel government is antagonizing many voters and leading to election losses, such as were already inflicted upon the Christian Democrats last week in being ousted from power in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's northernmost state.

But there is a more pervasive factor at work, in our opinion, the coming of the changing of the guard in terms of the attitudes of new generations of voters. As Kulish writes:

"The Pirates [Pirate Party], written off as a fringe party before their first success in Berlin last year [LawPundit did not see them as a "fringe" party], then as an urban phenomenon, won 7.8 percent on Sunday, enough to enter the state Parliament in Düsseldorf for the fourth election in a row." [5% is needed for a political party in Germany to enter a parliament. Material in brackets and links added by LawPundit.]

Governments, legislatures and courts -- not just in Germany, but also and particularly in the United States -- who do not see that their antiquated stances on intellectual property are doctrines of yesteryear that will be changed in the future -- are simply not reading their newspapers, so to speak, i.e. they do not have their noses enough into Facebook, Twitter and all the new social networking media, to comprehend where the world is heading.

"Clueless" is sometimes the right word for what established legal systems understand about the new digital age. See Ashby Jones at the WSJ Law Blog on Our Tech-Savvy Supreme Court ["not"].

While the older generations are holding "tea parties",
the younger generations (and the oldies who are "with" the times)
are BUYING tea,
ONLINE, mind you. ONLINE.

Please note that we link above at "buying tea" to King's Teagarden on Kurfürstendamm in Berlin not for advertising purposes but rather because an opinion-building selection of some of the people in Germany who do have a clue about politics and other things that matter, buy (or bought) their tea there for THEIR "tea parties". Indeed, we have shopped there ourselves.

Best known of the King's Teagarden tea buyers and drinkers in Anglo-American circles was perhaps Peter Ustinov [Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov], who passed away in 2004 and who dreamed of a global federalist system.

We emphasize that any similarity to the political tea parties in the USA is ... unintended, and, indeed, impossible.