100x the risk exposure in just ten years
According to Bloomberg, a substantial part of our current mess began in 1998:
Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt opposed an attempt by Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to study regulating over-the-counter derivatives. In 2000, Congress passed a law keeping them unregulated.
Levitt said he went along with concerns by Greenspan and Rubin that Born’s action might throw derivatives contracts into “legal uncertainty.” He said he now regrets that he didn’t press a presidential advisory group “to take a closer look” at the issue. Rubin said in an interview that “you could have had chaos” if Born’s plan found existing derivatives contracts invalid because they weren’t traded on an exchange. Both Born and Greenspan declined to comment.
Outstanding credit-default swaps, derivative contracts used to hedge or speculate on a company’s debt, would grow to $62 trillion from $631 billion…Ninety percent of the trades were concentrated in the hands of 17 banks.
100x the risk exposure in just ten years. It takes a real spirit of bi-partisanship, not to mention financial entrepreneurship, to get so far so fast. Thanks a lot, fellas.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Greenspan was a disaster as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, as this example clearly shows. Furthermore, all Feb Chairmen, prior to Greenspan did not comment on the US economy after leaving the position; Greenspan changed all that, running off at the mouth to any camera.
October 31st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Is it racist to point out that there are so many jewish names that are being mentioned
(frank, schumer, levitt, greenspan, rubin) so far?
MY point is that it seems that amongst jewish people, especially elderly jewish people, being an educated liberal seems to be the maxim one can be and many believe that they know what is good for the American people.
I am not racist ( in fact I am jewish too ) but I am simply saying what everyone is thinking.
jewish = democrat – progressive = liberal
with apologies to savage, levin, medved, jacoby and krauthammer and maybe ari fleischer
But their liberal values are sinking America because they are so well placed.
Melanie Phillips has also written about this too.