Previous regulatory changes gave perverse incentives to savings and loan executives. These perverse incentives ultimately led to unwise investments that when soured generated illiquid financial institutions. The government, instead of admitting fault for imposing unwise regulations, concocted new illegal activity and went after the savings and loan executives with very similar results. The brief review does not do justice to the injustice perpetrated by the government on individual Americans, many of whom I have not mentioned. Reading this book only intensified my distrust of the power we as citizens have entrusted to government.
Centralized control can only wreak havoc on individual liberty.
The book's main thrust is to detail the government's willingness to ride roughshod over certain individuals' freedoms. But in the process, the book also documents the inherent inefficiencies of government intervention. Not only are free, unregulated markets the best way to exchange tangible goods, but they are also the best way for the exchange of financial instruments. Although Fischel never calls for it, reading this book has convinced me that the Securities and Exchange Commission should be abolished. But it will function better without Big Brother in Washington in charge of it.