You know, they all said these events only happen once every hundred years. But we have “once every hundred years” events happening every year or two, which tells me something is the matter with the analysis.
Paul Volker’s very interesting speech.
You might ask how it went on as long as it did.
The grading agencies didn’t do their job and the banks didn’t do their job and the accountants went haywire.
I have my own take on this. There were two things that were particularly contributory and very simple. Compensation practices had gotten totally out of hand and spurred financial people to aim for a lot of short-term money without worrying about the eventual consequences. And then there was this obscure financial engineering that none of them understood, but all their mathematical experts were telling them to trust. These two things carried us over the brink.
… Obviously that hasn’t worked out very well.
We have to look at the accounting system. We have to look at the system for dealing with derivatives and how they’re settled. So there are a lot of systemic issues.
The main point I’m making is that we want to emerge from this with a more stable system. It will be less exciting for many people, but it will not warrant – I don’t think the present system does, either — $50 million dollar paydays in that central part of the system. Or even $25 or $100 million dollar paydays. If somebody can go out and gamble and make that money, okay.
But don’t gamble with the public’s money. And that’s an important distinction.