So, Who Is Brooksley Born?

how can this economic fraud we are living through be understood? one could follow the wiki tree of pages associated with the notion of 'swaptions'.

let's see...start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaption or here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate_swap or perhaps here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_%28finance%29 or, maybe better, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_%28finance%29, and you get the idea...right? no?

well perhaps there's an easier way.

we could look at the people who sold us this fraud and one of the people who stood up to them. you don't have to read any 'great books'. just watch two videos:

Michael Greenberger on credit rating agencies: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/293308-7 (which led to my question)

and

a frontline presentation, 'the warning': http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid (which cleared up my question-big time).

so, who is Brooksley Born?

someone who makes a liar out of all the pols and goldman suchs execs currently running around saying 'there's no way we could have seen this coming...'! it seems brooksley did and was put down hard for trying to act on what she saw by Alan Greenspan, Timothy Franz Geithner, and Lawrence Henry (the Hitman) Summers! funny, how the geith and hitman summers are still around.

now i'm not a conspiracy theorist, but i am seeing a reagan-clinton-bush-obama conservative continuum. and while the political party in the WH might change, the Fall St. crowd continues to party on (unregulated). its pretty obvious that the conservatives have gotten all they ever wanted economically: a vast gap in wealth, virtually no taxes for the rich, unregulated fraud markets, a never ending war generating huge profits, and taxpayer bailout bonuses to boot! (you see, despite what your mom might have taught you, crime does pay!)

so, as we fall, let us remember: Ayn Rand, the sophist soul of 20th century laissez-faire conservative economic BS and Brooksley Born, who could have started the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on the path to undoing what Rand's influence ultimately brought us to. perhaps, if we somehow get smarter, we'll allow Born to regulate Rand!

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