Hedge Fund Manager Asness Responds to Obama's War on Banks

Hedge fund manager Cliff Asness is "Appalled in Greenwich Connecticut" (the title of his post outlining the problems he sees with Obama singling out "banks" for punishment). His main point is that many, many parties were responsible for the economic crisis, and the solution is less government interaction, not more. "Punish failure. Don’t institutionalize too-big-to-fail by accepting it and then try to regulate away large failures with telephone books of rules and coercive government interference."

Here's his recap, but the entire post is well worth reading:

The bankers are far from without sin, and there are things in the system that need fixing. But the bankers have largely paid back what they borrowed and should not be penalized versus those who cannot repay, simply because the bankers performed well post bailout (wasn’t that the hope and intention?). Bankers didn’t cause this crisis any more than individuals did, and probably less than government. But those last two are inconvenient villains.

Asness, a libertarian, occasionally posts such enlightening and amusing rants at his website http://www.stumblingontruth.com/