I've worked in two industries that are heavily regulated - Commercial aviation (by the FAA) and Nuclear Power (by the NRC). Based on that experience, I will make the claim that no matter how well intentioned, any government regulation of an industry is by its very nature superficial at best. Government is just too inefficient for it to be otherwise, and available resources too limited. Yet, I have found both industries to be well run and safe, irrespectively.

Why? Because the people working in these industries are dedicated to their safe operation, as there are strong ethical considerations involed. Second, there no financial incentives or personal rewards to taking undue risks, unlike on Wall Street. In fact, the exact opposite is true. As the saying goes, the pilots will be the first at the scene of any crash. Likewise, you can kiss your career goodbye (and maybe your whole industry) if you melt down that $10 billion nuclear generating plant. You're just not going to get rich by taking a chance.

That's obviously not the case in the financial industry. Ethics? Forget it! And there's an obvious perverse conflict between personal financial incentives and the company's (or industry's) performance. Take a good risk, and if you're successful you can make enough to retire instantly (even if your company goes down in flames). If you lose, you won't be held accountable. And let's face it - Many financial risks will appear to pay off at least for the short term, giving you time to rack up that dough until people wise up and the crash comes.

So until those incentives are changed, Wall Street will continue to operate the way it does. Theoretically, normal market forces would prevent these perverse incentives from occuring - Take you're company down, and you're going down with it (and maybe to jail). But apparently the Obama administration believes (rightfully or wrongfully) that letting these companys go under in this way is too damaging to the economy. So they are bailing these people out, and greatly aggravating the incentives mismatch.

Obama's team seems to feel that more government, better regulation will overwhelm the incentives. That's where Paul's comments come in. Obama's approach is to assume they'll act like criminals, and keep the cops watching them. But I'm skeptical that the regulatory approach will work. You'd need to have an overwhelming government presence and oversight, almost a government takeover of the industry. I don't see that happening, frankly. So I expect nothing on Wall Street will really change.

Really? Not too late for the Democrats to take the lead in reform? The Democrats have for years been as much a part of the corrupt government establishment serving the financial elite as the Republicans. Your own article lays it out in some pretty nice detail. Why do you think Geithner's plan works as it does? And Obama is the one who appointed and continues to support him. If you simply try to obfuscate that fact by bashing Republicans, or somehow are satisfied in avoiding it by rationalizing it all away, then you (and so many other liberal media pundits) are just as much a part of the problem as they are. And we'll never make any real progress on reform until we (and you) recognize that reality as well.

So the automakers are not "to big to fail," but AIG and certain favored banks are? And the government now picks the economic winners (BOA, Citibank, Goldman) and the losers, (GM, Chrysler, Lehman Brothers), not market forces? And how exactly does the government do that? Gee, doesn't that just mean politics, government influence and maybe corruption will determine who succeeds, rather than economic merit or the free market? And didn't that approach fail big time in our superpower rival country awhile back? Putin and his friends must be howling with laughter at us. At least they've got all that excess oil and gas to export.

Here I tried to log on to Salon and got the National Enquirer instead. Oh - Wait a minute! This dirty gossip is about the family of a REPUBLICAN politician. Oh, now I understand! This is indeed Salon. The reader base is overwhelmingly liberal, which means publicizing and continued commenting on this tabloid type Palin junk is of course appropriate for such an audience. Even commendable. Sorry, my bad.

I'm sure you're right that there are many hero pilots who are (or were) just as deserving of the accolades Sully is getting. But Patrick, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sully's actions occured in the right palce at the right time for him to become the symbolic hero. He's simply standing in for all of his equally deserving and unknown colleagues over the years.

It's no different than with the honors given the firefighters lost in the World Trade Center, or those soldiers buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington. Society can't give proper hommmage to all deserving it, so we pick representative individuals and show our appreciation to all through them. And Sully, from what I've seen, is an outstanding choice as a symbol for the whole piloting profession. I think the whole flying public just wants to say thanks for "just doing what you do" so well.

The investors are rightfully extremely jittery right now concerning the bank stocks, since there is no tranparency concerning the banking industry bailouts. If anything, it seems reported improvements may only be smoke and mirrors (changed accounting rules, new fiscal quarters, trading loans for equity, pre-determined stress test results, etc.). The market hates uncertainty, and that's what it's getting now, big time. Why? Until Treasury and the Fed come clean and transparent on what's going on, the market will assume there's potentially something being hidden. So every rumor, from every source, will be given some credibility and have an impact. And rightfully so.