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Samah El-Shahat, Al Jazeera's resident economist, will be writing a regular column analysing key elements that have contributed to the global financial downturn and its impact across the world.
Economics has never been more exciting - we have had "quantitative easing" and "fiscal stimulation". So I suppose it wasn't going to be too long before we started discussing size.
And that is exactly what happened this week, when President Obama introduced what he termed the most sweeping overhaul of the banking system since the Great Depression.
Central to this was his plan to take in hand the "too-big-to-fail" banks - the TBTF.
So what are these TBTF banks?
Well, I call them the "save-us-or-else" banks and yes, you've guessed it, they hold the taxpayer to ransom. But how?
TBTF means banks which are so huge that, because they are so intertwined with other banks, their failure would cause financial devastation on a scale that would cripple the global economy.
Therefore, they have to be saved - by us.
Economists call them "systemically important" - that is, they are important to the whole financial system.
And because of this, so the argument goes, these banks have needed to be propped up by taxpayers' money.
Hence, they can fatten themselves with bad calls, become monstrous and greedy behemoths, take on dodgy risks ... and then we end up bailing them out.
When you think about it, it's not a bad life at all for the TBTFs ...
So how did the Obama plan measure up? Will we finally wave goodbye to being held hostage by the banks' size - the "save-us-or-else" type of bank?
Well, under new proposed regulations, the US Federal Reserve would be given powers to regulate institutions that are TBTF.
The TBTF will now be required to hold large amounts of cash in case the world comes crashing down around them.
Achilles' heel
Moreover, as the economist Paul Krugman writes in the International Herald Tribune, these new regulations give the US government "the authority to seize such institutions if they appear insolvent".
Notice that the operative word here is "seize" and not "kill off" or "liquidate".
And this, to my mind, is where the Achilles' heel of this new regulation regime lies.
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| Observers say Obama's regulation measures will not curb Wall Street's power [EPA] |
I fear that the Obama plan simply means handing the banks more ways to suck us dry and become ever-expanding behemoths – instead of limiting their growth or liquidating them.
Points aptly made by Peter J Wallison, the co-director of the American Enterprise Institute, in the Wall Street Journal: "Designating particular financial firms for this special kind of special regulatory treatment clearly signals to the markets that these institutions are too big too fail.
"It will reduce the perceived risk of lending to them, enabling them to raise funds at lower cost than their smaller competitors.
"The administration's proposal to provide a special bailout mechanism for large firms confirms the likelihood that these firms will never be closed down or liquidated."
This means, in effect, that this much vaunted "overhaul" of banking regulation isn't really going to happen.
And as for whether Wall Street's power will, finally, be limited under these new laws, the answer is, again, no.
As Joe Nocera, a columnist for the New York Times, has observed, the Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam - rather than rebuild the dam itself.
If Obama wanted to have real change, and real control over the size of banks, he would have reintroduced the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, introduced by Franklin Roosevelt as part of his 'New Deal'.
The act, as Nocera explains, "separated investment banking from commercial banking, so that the speculations of investment bankers wouldn't harm the public's commercial banks if they went wrong".
Protection from 'crazy bets'
"So that you and I can still have access to credit and be able to navigate the rough seas of the economy's ups and downs, even if bankers decided to take crazy bets and risks, we would be protected from their gambles. That would have made much more sense."
The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999 under the Clinton administration, a move that helped create a financial environment which has fuelled the global economic crisis.
Frank Rich, another New York Times columnist, stresses the repeal of the act allowed commercial banks like Citigroup and Bank of America to indulge in investment banking and make more use of lending instruments that were so complex even the heads of banks couldn't understand them.
"People started defaulting on the mortgages that these investment strategies afforded them, and because they were so widespread after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the world went plughole-wards," he says.
And Nocera says: "In terms of the scope and breadth of the Obama plan - and more important in terms of its overall effect on Wall Street's modus operandi - it's not even close to what Roosevelt accomplished during the Great Depression."
And I suppose these TBTF banks are counting on us to be TOO POWERLESS TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THEM.
And that is a sad state of affairs.
Samah El-Shahat also presents Al Jazeera's People & Power programme.
The views expressed in this column are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera editorial policy.
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