Brooksley Born became Chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in Aug.1996, The documentary describes what happened when Born tried to regulate the $495 trillion derivatives market.
The four men running the US financial system -- Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Arthur Levitt**** read her the riot act and stonewalled her proposals.
In Congressional hearings, Born insisted she was trying to protect the American people's money from the reckless practices of US banks.
But the "committee of four" assured Congress that any regulation would itself bring down the system. Congress, dependent on banking contributions, supinely agreed. The documentary clearly shows that the Clinton and Bush Administrations refused to regulate the derivatives market, and allowed it to grow to an eventual $595 Trillion during the housing bubble.
Alan Greenspan*, Robert Rubin** and Lawrence Summers*** were in charge in 1998.
Their then-deputies, Timothy Geitner and Ben Bernanke are in charge now.
All three are Fed or Goldman Sachs alumni.
This is like asking cocaine addicts to regulate drugs.
The Committee of Four *Greenspan was Fed Chairman from 1987 to 2006
**Rubin was the Secretary of the Treasury in both of Clinton's administrations.
***Summers was Chief Economist for the World Bank until 1993 and Director of the White House National Economic Council until late 2010. ****
Arthur Levitt, Jr. was the twenty-fifth and longest-serving Chairman of the
United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1993 to 2001.
PBS Frontline Documentary "The Warning" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/ In
The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer
Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar
derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the
financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
0 comments:
Post a Comment