I find this hard to believe, coming as it does from Timothy “Regulatory Capture” Geithner, but we now have reports that the Treasury is looking at new regulations on bank executive compensation, with the appropriate squeals of protest from the pigs who get the pay and bonuses.

There is also a proposal to regulate derivative trading by requiring that most of them be traded on open and transparent markets, as opposed to the “black pools” in the shadow banking system.

Additionally they are looking to implement a reporting system on these trades based on the “Trace” system on bond prices, which halved the spreads between buy and sell prices that banks charged to purchasers by about ½.

Now, if they could only remember the lessons the Marine Insurance Act of 1746, and require that people who buy insurance, including swaps, must have a material interest in the underlying asset.

Unfortunately, Geithner, Summers, and Their Evil Minions^™ still have their heart set on making the Federal Reserve the “systemic risk regulator, which is bad for a number of reasons:

• The Fed has been captured by Wall Street.
• There is no accountability at all, with its members appointed to very long terms by Congress, or by the banks themselves.
• The organization is opaque and secretive.

My guess is that these proposals are going to be half measures designed to forestall real change, but I’m a pessimist realist.