The Governor Pawlenty appointed Met Council is considering the benefits of folding suburban commuter bus services under one administration, say, under the wing of Metro Transit. But Len Simich, C.E.O. of SouthWest Transit says that suburban carriers do a better job of running their systems than any regional administration could. He should know, SouthWest Transit (serving Eden Prairie, Chaska, Chanhassen, Minneapolis and the U of M) is one of the nation's best, small commuter bus agencies. Simich talked about the challenges to his agency on Democratic Visions a public issues program I produce for DFL Senate District 42.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is still working to do good things in Congress. This time he wants to reform the credit rating agencies. These are the guys who gave strong ratings to the dangerous bundled mortgages. He introduced his bill today.
"Although credit rating agencies are given some regulatory status by practice, the oversight to which they are subjected is wholly inadequate," Ellison stated. "When these agencies put their mark of approval on complex products they confer a legitimacy that may not actually exist. We've learned of instances where credit rating agencies have given top ratings to products backed by dubious mortgages and other loans. Under current law there was really no one looking over the agencies' shoulders to make sure that they were making reasonable assumptions or had even a basic understanding of the risks they were assessing," Ellison indicated.
(from press release email)
If we want to never have the kind of wild speculation that caused our current economic crisis again, we need better oversight. After the 1929 crash, Congress enacted oversight and regulation bills that protected us until the Republicans began dismantling this beginning in the Reagan era. Now we see how foolish dismantling our regulatory and oversight functions was.
