Real crisis leadership

The choices of financial regulatory officials by President-elect Obama today are a sign of the new business paradigm that he should foster in the United States.
As I noted in my October commentary in the New York Society of Security Analysts newsletter, “Is there an Obama play in the market?”, the smart move for investors will be to embrace ethics and companies which improve society.
By picking Mary Schapiro, Daniel Tarullo and Gary Gensler, Obama signed that there will be “adult supervision” over financial markets for the first time in this century.
http://www.cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-R-13501
A New York Times story today points out the millions in bonuses that were paid to the perpetrators of the mortgage meltdown, often times to persons who came from outside the United States and shook down the country that helped them become wealthy.
Obama acted within a week of the Madoff scandal, where $50 billion went up in smoke, compared to the bumbling response of the current administration, which has taken the “weapons of mass destruction” approach to financial abuses. They didn’t find those weapons and they didn’t find the criminals on Wall Street.
If homeless guys who steal a loaf of bread have to spend years in jail, then the crooks who practically brought our country’s economy to its knees must also be brought to justice, and not just a slap on the wrists.