WORDS.

An Ongoing Discussion/Moment of Clarity...

"Kevin Roose has a very important corrective to the badly overstated myth that Wall Street somehow hasn't changed since the financial crisis. It has changed, a lot.

But this fact doesn't give me a ton of confidence because Washington hasn't changed.

...The question isn't really what's happening in 2013. It's what's going to happen in 2016 or 2019 or some other time when things look to have "returned to normal" and the basic psychology of complacency sets in. And here I worry. The regulatory system continues to be very much built on a system of discretion and fragmented lines of authority, and I don't think much has changed in terms of the political class's overall theory of finance and society. The consensus is still that easy access to consumer debt is more or less an unmitigated good, that leveraged investments in owner-occupied housing should be the bedrock of middle class savings (or "savings"), and that national champion financial services firms should be an important pillar of American industrial policy."

SLATE: MONEYBOX: Wall Street Has Changed Since The Crisis, But Washington Hasn't