Saturday Is For Art

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD No. 2, oil on wood wine box lid

With the men's college basketball championship going on right now is perhaps a good time to talk a little about the concept of a level playing field. Why is it in sports we demand a level playing field for all the players and teams? No one would think it fair or sporting to give one team an unfair advantage during the game. Regardless the size of the school, each team plays with five players on the court, and everyone plays by the same rules. Without this simple concept, no one would bother to watch or take interest in such a game.

When President Obama and his administration along with our Congress and hopefully the Federal Reserve Bank sits down to rewrite the rules for the banking, investment and the entire financial industry, they need to keep in mind the importance of the concept of the level playing field. The individual investor nor the institutional pension funds should be the mark for a financial mugging. This is quite simply not sport. Just as the rules of basketball make it the game that it is today, so too, the regulation, oversight and transparency must be at the foundation of a successful capital markets for both sides of a transaction.