Again, I am not a pro-government guy. My screen name should tell you that. I truly feel this is an issue of economic/national survival. We need to get something passed...very few Republicans in Congress disagree with that...let's make it as good and as clean as possible.
Here's Ben Stein on the issue of CDS derivatives:
According to what I hear from my betters in the world of finance, the most serious problems are not with the bundles of subprime mortgages themselves a large but not lethal quantum as far as I can tell but with derivatives contracts tied to subprime and other dicey debt. These contracts are superficially an attempt to insure against risks of default, hence the name credit-default swaps. In fact, they are an immense wager which anyone with lots of money or borrowing ability can enter about how mortgage-backed bonds, leveraged loan bonds, student loan bonds, credit card bonds and the like will perform.
These wagers entail amounts many times larger than the total of subprime loans. In fact, there are roughly $62 trillion in credit-default swap derivatives out there, compared with about $1 trillion of subprime mortgages. These derivatives are weapons of financial mass destruction, in the prophetic words of Warren E. Buffett. (Apparently believing that the worst is over, at least for one big investment bank, Mr. Buffett is now investing in Goldman Sachs.)
He proposes to simply annul the CDS's existing today. Interesting idea. Not sure the feasibility.
From a yahoo FAQ page:
“At Investorwords.com, we learned that when you invest in a derivative, the underlying asset is usually a commodity, bond, stock, or currency. You “bet” that the value derived from the underlying asset will increase or decrease by a certain amount within a certain fixed period of time.”
Seems like derivatives are too big a share of the financial markets? So what happens to prevent more problems?
Wyatt: it is time to let Atlas Shrug. Ayn would have enough balls to let it happen. Buck up.
Who? Other than his own 401k, what else does he run again?