America’s Oligarchs and the Financial Crisis

The Quiet Coup - The Atlantic (May 2009):
"The Quiet Coup: America’s Oligarchs and the Financial Crisis"

Here is an article from the chief economist of the IMF in 2007 and 2008...

The financial services industry by using a confluence of campaign finance, personal connections, and ideology there flowed, in just the past decade, a river of deregulatory policies that is, in hindsight, astonishing:
• insistence on free movement of capital across borders;
• the repeal of Depression-era regulations separating commercial and investment banking;
• a congressional ban on the regulation of credit-default swaps;
• major increases in the amount of leverage allowed to investment banks;
• a light (dare I say invisible?) hand at the Securities and Exchange Commission in its regulatory enforcement;
• an international agreement to allow banks to measure their own riskiness;
• and an intentional failure to update regulations so as to keep up with the tremendous pace of financial innovation.