[Welcome Angry Bear readers!]

Why not put access to credit -- at least to little people like us -- on the same basis as access to other forms of power like electricity, gas, and water? Why not turn the banks into regulated public utilities like the water company, the power company, or the gas company?

So far as I can tell, there's no need for "complex," "innovative" financial instruments at all; and they call them investment vehicles because they're designed to drive off with your money. What was wrong with community banks handling the really boring business of mortgages at 4%? What was wrong with a retirement system that didn't depend on speculation?

Thoughts occasioned by Pravda:

NEW YORK -- A top economic adviser to the incoming Obama administration unveiled a plan today to radically[oh?] rethink the global financial system, including a host of measures that would dramatically expand government control over banking and investment in the United States.

The report today was issued by the Group of 30, an organization of international economists and policy makers. But the recommendations were immediately seen by observers as a building block to an Obama plan because the lead author is Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Carter and Reagan administrations who will serve as a special Obama White House adviser. Part of Volcker's role is to help mastermind what could ultimately be the biggest overhaul of the U.S. financial system in decades.

The proposal offers 18 major recommendations that would insert government regulators into the board rooms of financial institutions as never before. The plan recommends vastly increased oversight of major banks, going as far as to recommend the end of an era of mega banks whose size makes their failure potentially catastrophic to the global financial system. To limit their size and scope, banks, the document states, should be prohibited from managing hedge funds or private equity funds.

In addition, major mutual funds should be required to operate as commercial banks, subjecting them to stricter government oversight. Those that choose not to comply should be forced to sell only relatively safe financial instruments offering investors low risk, and, most probably, limited room for outsized profits.

The document suggests that venture capital groups and rating agencies should also face a battery of government regulators.

"The issue posed by the present crisis is crystal clear: How can we restore strong, competitive, innovative financial markets to support global economic growth without once again risking a breakdown in market functioning so severe as to put the world economies at risk?" Volcker said in a statement. "We hope that our proposals, which explicitly relate to the weaknesses that have become evident in the financial system over the last year, will be a useful contribution to the debate about needed reforms both by private financial institutions and by public authorities."

No, that's not the issue at all. The real issue is who does the banking system serve? Right now, it serves only Big Money. Everything works for the top of the food chain. As we've seen, since the banks get their trillions NOW NOW NOW, while people who lose their jobs, their medical care, and their homes get help LATER LATER LATER. The priorities couldn't be more clear -- or more bi-partisan.

What I'm proposing is radical. What Volcker is proposing is incremental tinkering around the edges.

NOTE No word from Krugman yet -- he's also a member of the Group of Thirty.