The hunt for the guilty

Here's another must read from CJR's Ryan Chittum

A Depressing Look Back

The Washington Post has some enlightening historical reporting today on a series of Clinton Administration battles that left the market for derivatives unregulated, contributing mightily to the current crisis.

The story follows a New York Times piece we liked last week on Alan Greenspan’s central role in allowing the financial system to head off the cliff. Brooksley E. Born, Clinton’s head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued stark warnings on the threat of unregulated derivatives and tried to get something done. If she had succeeded it would certainly have moderated this crisis. But Greenspan and then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Arthur Levitt of the SEC (and the Treasury’s Larry Summers) battled her tooth and nail.

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