[GTALUG] Are you on the watch list?

[James Knott]

On 07/16/2016 04:42 PM, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
>
> > The wallstreet guys came up with a method to manage risk and it
> worked well till everybody used it then all the risk was back but in a
> slightly different form.
>
> Could you clarify that? I think I have a different opinion about wall
> street risk management than you do.
>
> Sub prime mortgages decimated Fannie May & Freddy Mac. Enron wiped out
> pensions and Bernie Madoff got 150 years in the slammer for his Ponzi
> scheme, pretty much all within the last decade.
>


A big part of the problem is business has been claiming they need
deregulation to grow. Well, that, coupled with lack of enforcement led
to the 2008 collapse.  Bernie Madoff is a perfect example of what lack
of enforcement can do, as the SEC was pretty much handed the case on a
silver platter yet did nothing.  Another example of the "benefits" of
deregulation is the Lac Mengantic train wreck, which had just a single
person running the train after the railway convinced the government they
could do it safety.  The investigation showed that the trigger for this
was the engine fire, which was due to lack of maintenance.  It also
showed that the track was in such poor condition that it wasn't safe to
run any trains over it.  Of course, we can't forget that our own federal
government set up the mechanism that enabled the wealthy and large
corporations to hide money offshore and evade taxes on it.