Orange_Juice
Senior Member
- Jul 24, 2008
- 1,038
- 57
- 48
Before the idiotic dittoheads start screaming a Big Lie about how the government created the financial crisis let's get the facts staright:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/business/27sec.html?em
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/business/27sec.html?em
WASHINGTON The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Streets largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down.
The S.E.C.s oversight responsibilities will largely shift to the Federal Reserve, though the commission will continue to oversee the brokerage units of investment banks.
Also Friday, the S.E.C.s inspector general released a report strongly criticizing the agencys performance in monitoring Bear Stearns before it collapsed in March. Christopher Cox, the commission chairman, said he agreed that the oversight program was fundamentally flawed from the beginning.
The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work, he said in a statement. The program was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. The fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate of the program, and weakened its effectiveness, he added.
Mr. Cox and other regulators, including Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, have acknowledged general regulatory failures over the last year. Mr. Coxs statement on Friday, however, went beyond that by blaming a specific program for the financial crisis and then ending it.