Former Louisiana Insurance Commissioner and our good friend Jim Brown was kind enough to share his weekly column with us here at slabbed. It deals with subprime, credit default swaps and insurance regulation and is very well done. I highly recommend it to our readers that are not financially oriented as Jim makes the issues and concepts very understandable.
sop
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Thursday, September 25th, 2008
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
GREED IS GOOD IN LOUISIANA
The national financial crisis finds Wall Street and financial regulators scurrying for cover, and trying to find a quick fix to financial problems that have festered for years. It’s puzzling that there is been nary a peep out of Louisiana officials, particularly in light of the fact that lack of regulation of the very financial institutions creating this meltdown has been part of the culture of Louisiana regulators for years. Where is the outrage by Louisiana members of Congress? And why have Louisiana legislators failed to address a number of serious financial problems right here at home?
Oh you will hear that this is a federal problem, and there is not much which Louisiana officials can do about the financial meltdown. But even though there is plenty of blame to go around, at least in other states, there is a scurrying of effort to tighten the regulatory system that in recent years has acquired a laissez-faire mindset.
So can we get a simple explanation as to exactly what happened? Continue reading “Jim Brown on Subprime, Default Credit Swaps and Insurance Regulation”