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the story you may have missed
Sep. 30th, 2014 12:53 amThis last weekend, This American Life broke the biggest story on bank regulation in two years or more. And it didn't even make much of a ripple.
It's called The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra. (Written story version here, This American Life transcript here, Bloomberg article here.) It is regulatory capture writ large, and in simple and easy to understand terms. It's the story about how the New York Federal Reserve runs interference for the large banks they regulate, and discourage - or just fire - the people who try to enforce any regulations.
One such person was Carmen Segarra, who had started to realise how badly wrong things were, and who had secretly started recording many meetings, up to and including her firing. These recordings have now all been released.
If you have persisted in thinking, despite my many updates in the past, that anything has improved in the financial system, please listen to this story. It has not.
There's been very little coverage, though. Four minutes on MSNBC. HuffPo and CNN have some coverage less of the story itself and more on Elizabeth Warren's call for a Congressional investigation. Inc. says that this is an example of why you need these sorts of people in your startup - and on your side. There's a little bit of blogging, some of which is on major outlet sites, but not all that much. Mostly, the coverage is locals and fringe.
That's pretty dramatic failure to cover what Bloomberg - the only outlet covering this for real, see link above - called "the Ray Rice tapes of the financial sector." You have to go to the UK to get anything else substantive.
Maybe it's because everybody knows. Maybe it's because nobody expects better. Maybe it's because nobody wants a reminder. I don't know. But here, inarguably, is your smoking gun. Now you can't not know.
It's called The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra. (Written story version here, This American Life transcript here, Bloomberg article here.) It is regulatory capture writ large, and in simple and easy to understand terms. It's the story about how the New York Federal Reserve runs interference for the large banks they regulate, and discourage - or just fire - the people who try to enforce any regulations.
One such person was Carmen Segarra, who had started to realise how badly wrong things were, and who had secretly started recording many meetings, up to and including her firing. These recordings have now all been released.
If you have persisted in thinking, despite my many updates in the past, that anything has improved in the financial system, please listen to this story. It has not.
There's been very little coverage, though. Four minutes on MSNBC. HuffPo and CNN have some coverage less of the story itself and more on Elizabeth Warren's call for a Congressional investigation. Inc. says that this is an example of why you need these sorts of people in your startup - and on your side. There's a little bit of blogging, some of which is on major outlet sites, but not all that much. Mostly, the coverage is locals and fringe.
That's pretty dramatic failure to cover what Bloomberg - the only outlet covering this for real, see link above - called "the Ray Rice tapes of the financial sector." You have to go to the UK to get anything else substantive.
Maybe it's because everybody knows. Maybe it's because nobody expects better. Maybe it's because nobody wants a reminder. I don't know. But here, inarguably, is your smoking gun. Now you can't not know.
