Bush would expand powers of Federal Reserve

Bizarre -- yet so typical of Bush:

The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the way the U.S. financial industry is regulated.

In an effort to deal with the problems highlighted by the current severe credit crisis, the new plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a 22-page executive summary obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The proposal would designate the Fed as the primary regulator of market stability, greatly expanding the central bank's ability to examine not just commercial banks but all segments of the financial services industry.

No matter what the problem is, Bush's solution is always to centralize control. In education, it's No Child Left Behind, which usurped power from the States (the one time he warned us what he was going to do, and we, as an electorate, agreed to it). Same with terrorism -- when the mish-mash of intelligence services failed to coordinate prior to 9/11, Bush's response was to create the massive and Byzantine Department of Homeland Security -- a title that still gives me the creeps.

And he calls himself a conservative?