Required Reading – The Genesis of the Economic Meltdown

Regardless of your views of Frontline.org, this video has valuable information about the genesis of the economic meltdown. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/

In summary, it started with Greenspan as an aide to President Ford. Greenspan was a self serving, arrogant individual who surrounded himself with similar cronies with like minded ideologies, all of whom refused to listen to anyone else. In fact he and his team diligently fought anyone who opposed them.

Brooksly Born was one who got it right and valiantly went head to head with Greenspan and lost. In a Senate hearing she forewarned the fall of the American economy and beseeched the US Congress to mandate regulations on OTC Derivatives. She was silenced and ignored. Sadly her predictions were spot on.

While Greenspan is for 100% free economic systems and Born is for highly regulated systems, I believe the solution lies somewhere in the middle..

Greenspan is right in saying markets will police themselves but he is wrong in believing it can be done without some form of comprehensive disclosure. Personally I am shocked that Greenspan refused to have the concerns which traded Over The Counter (OTC) Derivatives prepare any type of disclosure. There was no transparency whatsoever and Derivative traders ran rampant fueled by greed and unsubstantiated wealth.

To prevent the economic crisis we are in now all we needed was for the government to mandate the OTC Derivatives and all other OTC stocks  and publish the equivalent of quarterly and annual reports required for other companies by the SEC.

The dangers still exist today and yet nothing is done. We, The People, must demand public disclosure and a mandate of OTC Derivatives or history is doomed to repeat itself over and over to the detriment of generations to come.