Wall Street Self Destructs

Wall Street’s Best Investment: Ten Deregulatory Steps to Financial Meltdown

By Robert Weissman and James Donahue

Wall Street has no one but itself to blame for the current financial crisis. Investment banks, hedge funds and commercial banks made reckless bets using borrowed money. They created and trafficked in exotic investment vehicles that even top Wall Street executives — not to mention firm directors — did not understand. They hid risky investments in off-balance-sheet vehicles or capitalized on their legal status to cloak investments altogether. They engaged in unconscionable predatory lending that offered huge profits for a time, but led to dire consequences when the loans proved unpayable. And they created, maintained and justified a housing bubble, the popping of which has thrown the United States and the world into a deep recession, resulted in a foreclosure epidemic ripping apart communities across the country, and caused the financial crisis itself. But while Wall Street may not have anyone else to blame, and is culpable for the financial crisis and global recession, others do share responsibility. MORE>>

Cleaning Up the Mess: New Rules for Financial Regulation

An Interview with Ellen Seidman

Ellen Seidman is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy institute. From 1997 to 2001, she was director of the U.S Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision. MORE>>

Closing the Regulatory Gap: Derivatives and the Hedge Fund Industry

An Interview with David Ruder

David Ruder was chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1987 to 1989. He is currently a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, and served as the school’s dean from 1977 to 1985. He is also chair of the Mutual Fund Directors Forum, an organization providing education to independent directors of mutual funds. MORE>>

Foreclosed: The Failure to Regulate Abusive Lending Practices

An Interview with Debbie Goldstein

Debbie Goldstein is an executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan research and policy organization committed to eliminating abusive lending practices. MORE>>