Hank Paulson, the secretary of the treasury unveiled a 218 page report overhauling the federal reserves role in oversight of mortgage lending, insurance and investment banking. While this is definitely needed, do not pop open the champagne just yet. The states have done a terrible job maintaining standards for any of these industries and continue to over legislate after the fact. We do need a federal oversight that is comprehensive and encompassing. But even if that is what Paulson is proposing, and after looking at it I am not sure it is, we will have little or no chance for anything that is presented by the Bush administration to be passed by congress.

What we will have is the candidates that really have no idea of what or how to fix the problem trying to make political hay out of the credit crunch. There will be blaming and finger pointing, but no real solutions. Don't you just love election years? At a time when we need calm cool heads that understand the complexity of our economic markets we will have political hacks trying to convince the electorate of who to blame.

We do have some hope. If the government is so caught up in who gets credit for reforming credit, the problem may fix itself. That is the beauty of capitalism. If we leave it alone the market will fix itself. But even if that happens you can be sure some politician will pass legislation to be able to take credit for what the market has already done. That is what they do.