No Giant Has Gentle Hands

The new Dodd-Frank Bill was a reaction to the problems created in 2008 resulting from public trading of financial derivatives. Among other things it creates over 500 laws and agencies. But derivatives are used by a lot of people and companies that are not financial houses. Farmers sell futures on the exchanges to lock in a price for their crops. Manufacturers will buy metal futures to guarantee the cost of their production. 180 companies have petitioned the government to be exempted from participating in Dodd-Frank, companies like Ford. These companies estimate their cost of compliance--for a peripheral part of their business--will be 250 million dollars a year per company. They estimate a loss of 100 thousand jobs.

When I was a child we played a game called "Telephone." One person at the end of a line or row of kids would write a single sentence on a piece of paper and hand it to the kid next to them. That kid would whisper what was written to the next kid and so on down the line. At the end of the row, the last kid would write down what he heard and everyone would compare what sentence started and what emerged at the end of the line. The difference between the two was usually quite funny.

That game is now called "Government."