This is not encouraging news: Both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are reportedly getting set to formulate new rules aimed at  making banks “rein in practices that made multimillionaires out of many financial executives,” as the New York Times puts it in a page one story Saturday.

On the surface, that sounds good.  Till you get to this part of the Times story: “…because the rules would be applied through the confidential bank examination process, it would be hard for consumers and investors to judge how strictly the rules were being applied.”

Nice touch!

In other words, the Feds may come up with some nifty new rules to cut back some of the greed bankers have shown in this financial crisis, only no one will really know if the rules are working, except, of course, the government. But it is asking a lot of taxpayers to trust government officials to keep the banks honest when they did such a terrible job in recent years keeping just about anyone honest!

What happened to the Obama administration’s emphasis on transparency?

I know the officials and banks probably have some fancy reason why they think it is better to keep this information in the dark, but, whatever it is, I am not buying it. And, neither should you!

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