Skin in the Game, or Baby and Bathwater?

"In what’s affectionately being called “Obama Wednesday” in some quarters, details of what’s being billed by a breathless press as “the most sweeping financial reform proposal since the 1930s” are not surprisingly already beginning to leak out. But what’s being leaked thus far isn’t really breathtaking, or even new-ish. The latest details, leaked via the U.S. Treasury early this week, show that part of the financial reform package will include a so-called ’skin-in-the-game’ requirement for issuers in the structured assets space, including particularly mortgages. "