Friday, October 3, 2008

The Reckoning - More About the Mess

The Reckoning - Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt

"With that, the five big independent investment firms were unleashed...In loosening the capital rules, which are supposed to provide a buffer in turbulent times, the agency also decided to rely on the firms’ own computer models for determining the riskiness of investments, essentially outsourcing the job of monitoring risk to the banks themselves."