24 December 2010

Obama's Failure to Reform: A Bipartisan Crisis And A General Failure of Ethics and Stewardship


I hope everyone has the opportunity to see "Inside Job" in the months ahead.

The issue is not settled. As someone who watches the markets closely every day, often tick by tick, and speaks to market participants around the world, I see an accident waiting to happen in the US financial system. And it is surprising, almost shocking, that it receives so little attention while there is so much focus on the relatively trivial.

We have just witnessed one of the greatest financial frauds in modern history. Where are the indictments? Where is the reform?

It concerns me greatly because it is such a important economy. Such a failure would have unsettling collateral damage on the rest of the world not only because of its size, but through the transmission mechanism of the dollar reserve currency which is pervasive in trade and in most central bank holdings.

Like its cronies on Wall Street, the government in Washington thinks it is Too Big To Fail. It may very well be. But propping it up is probably too great of a task for the rest of the world to bear indefinitely. And so we may have an uneasy year or two ahead.