25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis

As I mentioned back in March, the blame game for the GFC is in full swing now.

In this spirit, Time gives us 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis.

Of particular note were the acts passed under Bill Clinton - "...the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation". I remember reading the Glass-Steagall Act being repealed and thinking at the time that no good would come from it.

I'm still surprised that under George W. Bush, nothing really came out of the Enron ashes to provide better governance. Much of Sarbanes-Oxley is useful (in fact, most well run companies already employed most of the tactics anyway) but failure to eliminate off-balance sheet entities seems to be the most glaring omission.

It's interesting to see Lew Ranieri make the list - he's a central figure in Liar's Poker.




PS - If you are still interested after reading that, another humorous take on who to blame can be found in the Rolling Stone article The Dirty Dozen and it's closely linked article The Big Takeover. My favourite line is in section V - Repo Men. "...the unpleasant discovery that if Congress didn't like the Fed handing trillions of dollars to banks without any oversight, Congress could apparently go **** itself — or so said the law." :-)

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posted by Lee Gale @ 3:00 AM,

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