Unregulated derivatives trading crashed the U.S. economy back in 2008, and two years later Congress passed laws to prevent that from happening again. But Citigroup just wrote derivatives deregulation into the $1.1 trillion federal funding bill, and Congress passed it. Now Citi can blow people’s savings on bad exotic derivatives bets, and taxpayers will likely cover the losses.
Here’s what Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had to say about that:
More people left Iceland in 2009 than in any year since 1887. Some of those who remain line up in charity food lines. A country can expect this after its economy becomes “zombulated” by unregulated financial institutions and a right-wing, laissez-faire government. In the words of current Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, “the ideology of an unregulated free market utterly failed.”
More:
Eighth anniversaries are “Bronze Anniversaries,” and there have been few events more brazen than the collapse of the Enron Corporation. It happened eight years ago, and this groundbreaking cataclysm would not have been possible without the assistance of Wendy Gramm, PhD.
As Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Dr. Gramm ended governmental oversight of energy derivatives traded by Enron and other companies. Six days after leaving government, she was named to the Enron board of directors, where she headed the Audit Committee and was paid a million or two by the rogue corporation.
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