The Gluttony of Political Manoeuvering

Although I am far too experienced-my favourite euphemism for being older-I still am always shattered by the myopia of politics regardless of the setting.

In my tenure in a myriad of Executive Committees I was forever hoping that in those hallowed halls of senior management we would be able to let our "career" guards down and actually focus on doing the right thing for the company. Invariably the same turf battles that took place on the trading floors were reflected in the respective heads of businesses in the committee. This sad realisation was unfortunately repeatedly compounded by the poor leadership of the Committee Head who either was the CEO or would present to the CEO, who also depressingly was either a megalomaniac, or a dithering fool, neither of which were what was required to effect rational decision making and strong leadership.

Imagine then my despair to "discover" that the Office of Thrift Supervision (OFS)and the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) engaged in the same foolishness fighting turf battles rather than focusing on the problems at hand with relation to Washington Mutual (WaMu).

In the world of finance, and most likely in the world in general there are basic cliques that are always in a contentious relationship with one another.

Among them there is the "what's good for the firm is good for me" group in conflict with the "what's good for me is good for the firm" group. Tangential to these are those that fight over their share of the pie, versus those that try and make the pie bigger....and then fight over their share of the pie.

Of course it's obvious that the regulators are human and therefore just as fallible as anyone else. I think however that what it really exposes is the lack of quality of management which pervades every corridor of power regardless of the setting.

All this clamouring for more regulation smells like "garbage in-garbage out".

Senate investigators said that the OTS protected WaMu from other government agencies and failed to act when it identified errors, risk and fraud at the Seattle-based lender.

The Regulators were fully aware that there was a problem, and knowingly concealed it in a turf war!?

I guess they were in the "bigger piece of the pie" club. Pity by the time they got their plate the pie had burnt.