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Greenspan Blasts Fannie, Freddie Fix - WSJ.comAug 14, 2008 ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121865515167837815.html
Alan Greenspan faults the US’s approach in fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying the credit crisis offered an ideal opportunity to ...
online.wsj.com/article/SB121865515167837815.html

Brooksley Born Excoriates Alan Greenspan: “You Failed”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2488726/posts?page=8

“At today’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing, Brooksley Born, the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, declared Alan Greenspan’s tenure at the Federal Reserve an unmitigated failure – to his face. Greenspan accords a certain degree of respect on Capitol Hill, despite Born’s accurate take on his many failures, and so this outburst was highly unusual – and gratifying.

Born, who pushed to strictly regulate derivatives under the Clinton Administration, but lost the battle to, among other people, Alan Greenspan, told the former Federal Reserve chair that his agency “failed to prevent housing bubble, failed to prevent the predatory lending scandal, failed to prevent the activities that would bring the financial system to the verge of collapse.”

“You failed to prevent many of our banks from consolidating and growing to a size that are now too big or too interconnected to fail,” Born added. She added that Greenspan’s views on deregulation, which he took as an article of faith, contributed to the Federal Reserve’s failure in delivering on its mandate.” [snip]

Brooksley Born

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born

“..Born was particularly concerned about swaps, financial instruments that are traded over the counter between banks, insurance companies or other funds or companies, and thus have no transparency except to the two counterparties and the counterparties’ regulators, if any. CFTC regulation was strenuously opposed by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.[4] On May 7, 1998, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt joined Rubin and Greenspan in objecting to the issuance of the CFTC’s concept release. Their response dismissed Born’s concerns off-hand and focused on the possibility that CFTC regulation of swaps and other OTC derivative instruments would increase legal uncertainty of such instruments, potentially creating turmoil in the markets, and reducing the value of the instruments. Further concerns voiced were that the imposition of new regulatory costs would stifle innovation and push transactions offshore.[7]..”

Credit Default Swaps were huge in the meltdown.

5 posted on Wednesday, April 07, 2010 6:02:22 PM by Anti-Bubba182