Last night, Frontline did a story on Brooksley Born, who was in charge of the CFTC. This was a small regulatory agency that was not looked on with great respect. When she came in, Washington was all about de-regulation. The market was flying high, and there was no reason to mess with it. She saw how these secretive derivatives were being used by big banks, and saw how dangerous they were. When she reported this, and wanted to regulate them, the big money policy folks in Washington tore her APART. She resigned after they took away her regulatory powers. She saw all this coming, and now those in power are trying to do the same thing to regulation. We will continue to have boom and bust cycles like this if we do not fix some major flaws in the system. Will we ever learn?
Here is where you can find the video.
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