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I wonder if there isn't a way to deal with this problem through something like the South African divestment movement of the 80's. If institutions like universi

I wonder if there isn't a way to deal with this problem through something like the South African divestment movement of the 80's. If institutions like universities, pensions, and corporations were under pressure from their constituents to not do business from Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs would start feeling the pressure to not capture regulators. It is not clear that banking advice from GS is that great. Often times their customers are effectively the victim. If there was popular pressure to not deal with them they might clean up their act.

josho 12y ago
I'll rephrase your suggestion: Since the regulator responsible for monitoring private financial institutions has failed, we along with universities, pensions, etc should stop investing in those financial institutions. The above strikes me as very backwards. Isn't the appropriate response to fire the heads of the regulators, rebuild the agency to act on the recommendations that an outside body proposed to the regulators, and ensure that congress follows up to ensure changes have occurred. Oh wait. Therein lies the problem, congress has been captured by the finance sector's lobbying, so I'm being idealistic and your proposal is not as backwards as I first thought. I'm starting to understand Lawrence Lessig's focus on removing money from election campaigns, so that we can have real government policy because that's the real root cause of issues like this.