Key Oil Figures Were Distorted by US Pressure: Whistleblower

1) Rules, yes. They are called laws. I don't believe in anarchy. I'm all for the social contract. I think our Constitution did a very good job of laying out some basic rights. We have laws in place to protect those rights. Don't violate my (or anyone else's) rights to life, liberty and happiness and you are free to pursue your own life, liberty and happiness. Regulation, as I think you mean it? No thanks. I've already explained why, but I'll try to explain again below.

2) The notion of the SEC failing us is as wrong as the notion of the police failing us because people still commit crime. There isn't a policing agency around that can monitor everyone 24/7 and prevent crime before it happens. That said, there is no need for the SEC, which has been useless at best and has created problems at worst. I could get into detail, and will if you really care.

3) There is no such thing as "too big to fail" in my book. That's the bullshit your "regulators" laid on us to hand out their favors to the interests they corruptly serve. Mega-banks, whatever they are, are no problem to me if they don't violate my basic rights. Secondly, Glass Steagall wasn't repealed, even though I know what you were trying to say. I'd also submit that the Glass Steagall regulations that were lifted when the Financial Services Modernization Act was passed, created many of the problems we are seeing now in the first place . You hinder free markets with draconian regulation and create a screwed up world that carefully creates interests that are a) beholden to their regulators, and b) are told what they can and can't own or invest in. Then overnight you change the rules and tempt them with the previously forbidden fruit. Try that in any other medium. Withhold food from someone for a few days and then put an all-you-can-eat buffet in front of them. How do you expect them to behave? The thing is, if you hadn't denied these industries food from 1933 until 1999 and had allowed the world to form naturally -- instead of creating the unnatural "regulated" world that was so necessary -- any problems that can be traced to the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act never occur. Lastly, derivatives have nothing to do with Glass Steagall. They are financial instruments that predate Graham-Leach-Bililey.

As an aside, most people who talk about derivatives don't understand what they are. Many types of derivatives leverage debt in an economy, which probably makes it difficult for the economy to service the actual debt obligations. That can choke off economic activity, as a result, and at the extreme, they probably can help cause a recession under certain circumstances. That said, derivatives aren't the problem. Debt is the problem. Too much debt caused the recession, not a financial instrument. The particular derivatives you are talking about were instruments "derived" from mortgages and credit card debt. Are mortgages inherently evil? Credit cards? You'd probably say we need to "regulate" people's usage of those things, too (as paternalistic as I think you are). The thing is, a major reason why it was so easy to accumulate the levels of debt that we saw over the last decade was the monetary policy that encouraged it (your trusted regulation). So tinkering with the economy (or our markets) causes a problem in the first place. Left to their own devices people won't put themselves into an unsustainable debt situation. They do, however do that, when the government embarks on policy that makes money unnaturally cheap with prolonged tinkering that is intended to overheat the economy for political advantage. Mortgages and credit cards are instruments that allow people to accumulate that debt. Derivatives are instruments that allow speculators (people hoping to profit) and hedgers (people hoping to limit their risk) to leverage that debt. And rather than looking at the situation I just outlined and concluding that the policy that tried to manage the economy -- and overheated it encouraging unnatural levels of debt -- was at the root of the problem, you look at the situation and conclude that the answer is MORE or DIFFERENT WAYS of trying to "regulate" or manage the economy. It doesn't make sense to me.