There's an important new voice in the discussion on the post-Dodd-Frank regulation of the 'megabanks'. Herbert Allison is no stranger to the concept of government bailouts. He was Obama's head of TARP as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability until recently, the former CEO of post-conservatorship Fannie Mae, and was an active participant during the LTCM bailout of 1998 (see especially Lowenstein's account of the early warnings, page 150). 

Allison's biography--someone who has spanned the spectrum of market participation, from Merrill Lynch to TIAA-CREF to Fannie Mae to the Treasury--makes the fact that he has has self-published his diagnosis/prognosis of the crisis -- called The Megabanks Mess -- a very big deal. In particular, the fact that Allison appears to advocate for a dramatic rethinking of the regulation of the banks in a Johnson-Kwak vein is extremely newsworthy, although this story hasn't broken yet. It reveals what some have suspected, that there was a rift in the Obama Administration on Dodd-Frank, and that some -- including the head of TARP -- weren't pleased with how quickly the banks and their government regulators returned to business as usual. 

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