[r9etb]

Remember, we're talking about securitsed loans at the root of the problem. There are 3 separate regulatory agencies that must pass on bundles of securitised loans before they can be put on offer.

AIG didn't fail because of securitized loans. They were done in by credit default swaps that were anchored in air -- and not regulated.

Greedy bastards? Yep, no shortage of those. The greedy bastards couldn't have put the ball in play, though -- couldn't even have got the game going -- without the sheer and persistent incompetence of SEC, COC, CFTC, FASB, HUD, and easily a dozen other alphabet-soup agencies.

While I can certainly agree with you about the incompetence of those groups -- not to mention the politicians who appear to have stayed bought -- the greedy bastards are still to blame for their actions.

An honest financier would not have played the games those guys did.

[SAJ]

AIG is an insurance company, principally, and as such is subject to all sorts of regulation, state and Federal, including supervisory regulation of investments they make. The regulators simply looked past CDSs, which is -- in retrospect -- hilarious.

Writing a CDS is nothing more, really, than writing a naked put on a debt instrument. When you or I -- or, ftm, Goldman Sachs or Merrill -- write a naked put on anything, we are required to margin the position properly. How the regulators 'thought' (if I may use that word; they clearly didn't think at all) that AIG or any other insuror could write untold stacks of these instruments WITHOUT proper margin requirement is just another indicator of how incompetent the regulators were...and undoubtedly still are.

I should have included CDSs in the original post, sorry.