Stop bankers from gambling our money

Hey, investor! Feel like a chump? You should.

Thanks to the absence of meaningful regulatory oversight, you, along with me and the rest of the ordinary investing public were taken on a ride by the wizards of Wall Street.

What they did was to sell to pension funds, insurance companies and other investment pools called collateralized debt obligations that these selling firms anticipated would fail. In other words they sold junk investments, on purpose. Then these firms placed "bets" through other investment vehicles that most of us do not understand that would pay off in the event the pension funds and the insurance companies (you and me) took big losses when the junk investments tanked. And, by golly, they did tank. These guys are no dummies.

The really telling thing is that this apparently could turn out to be legal, in the sense that you and I will continue to hold the bag and the fast players will continue to hold our money under the laws in effect when this swindle occurred.

The Republicans will try to prevent stiffer oversight of these investments in the fight for financial regulation that is beginning to take shape. They won't be honest about it. They won't directly admit what they are doing. They will have a sloganeering campaign in which we will be regaled with senseless arguments comparable to the "death panel" stuff we went through in the health care debate.

It is amazing to me that large numbers of those people whose investments have been pillaged will almost certainly wind up being taken in by this campaign. But if history is any guide, it will look like a "good bet" to someone that this will happen. In this context the "bet" will take the form of massive television advertising buys by the Wall Streeters and their Republican enablers.

Alfred Y. Kirkland Jr.

Elgin