A New Financial Model For Wall Street.

There have always been two Wall Streets, one for the rich and one for everyone else. I propose that we make it explicit and legal: a "Preferred" market for the rich and a "Common" one for the rest. As a rich individual or institution that engages in the "Preferred" market, you'll be free to indulge in every kind of financial instrument available: Hedge funds, derivatives, mortgage-backed securities, you name it. Arbitrage, leveraged buyouts, default credit swaps, everything is on the table. Most importantly, there will be no interference - not from self-regulating industry bodies and certainly not from government at any level. All conflicts will be handled with guns - like your heroes, the cowboys of the Old West, or your current analogues, Mexican drug gangs. The only rule is that you use your own money.

The "Common" market will serve everyone else. It will consist of a rubber donut for men and a dildo for women. You are, of course, free to choose either or all. We're not here to judge.

Suppose you're involved in the "Preferred" market and you're a bank that needs depositors, an insurance company that needs policy holders or a publicly-owned company that needs, well, the public? Go find your own rubber donut.

Will this new model conflict with programs, present and future, of the Obama administration? No, because it's very similar to their own strategy of recognizing a long-standing problem, disguising it as change and hoping it's mistaken for progress. TARP, for instance, acts like a tarp in covering up a problem until conditions improve. Then, we can go back to ignoring the problem or taking it for granted. True, President Obama has only been in office for a year and this new model is fueled - to a large degree - by impatience. It's the impatience, however, of someone watching the mandate of the last election recede quickly into the past and the future at the same time.