Fixing The Banks

Gary Becker and Richard Posner debate regulation. Here's Posner:

...there should be no new regulatory measures until the depression reaches bottom and recovery begins (not that there can be certainty about when that point has been reached--there were several false bottoms in the 1930s depression). Any regulatory initiatives at this time will simply increase the already great uncertainty in which the financial industry is operating; and as Keynes pointed out, anything that increases uncertainty in a depression causes hoarding, which can in turn precipitate a deflation likely to deepen and protract an economic downturn.