I didn't see this coming! Bank Regulators make sure that bankers benefit from bank bailouts: NYT

James Buchanan won a Nobel for public choice theory.  My prof George Stigler won one for regulatory capture.  But it was left to the Great Obama to illustrate to the New York Times how regulatory apparatus inevitably benefit the wealthy and well connected within the regulated community.  The only effective regulation is a free market:  free markets always ensure that the rich and successful breed as the byproducts of their success the seeds of their demise.  With regulators, all you need to do is bribe a few dozen Ivy league lawyers.  And we all know that they're whores.  Read the whole Sulzberger, NYT thing:

TARP INSPECTOR GENERAL: Bank bailout mostly benefited banks. “Worse, Treasury apparently has chosen to ignore rather than support real efforts at reform, such as those advocated by Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to simplify or shrink the most complex financial institutions. In the final analysis, it has been Treasury’s broken promises that have turned TARP — which was instrumental in saving the financial system at a relatively modest cost to taxpayers — into a program commonly viewed as little more than a giveaway to Wall Street executives.”

Lefties are always shocked when their fantasies turn into frauds.  They never learn because they don't want to know the truth.  Hatttip Instapundit