Today, he is emerging as one of the nation’s archreformers, pushing to impose some of the most stringent new financial regulations in history. And as the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the leading contender to oversee the complex derivatives contracts that played a central role in the financial crisis and, in turn, the Great Recession, he is in a position to influence the outcome.
It may seem an unlikely conversion, but it is one that has won the approval of Brooksley E. Born, of all people, a former outspoken head of the commission. She sounded alarms more than a decade ago about the dangers hiding in the poorly understood derivatives market and was silenced by the same Washington power brokers that counted Mr. Gensler as a member.
Mr. Gensler opposed Ms. Born, according to people who worked at the commission in the 1990s, and in 2000 played a significant role in shepherding through Congress deregulation measures that led to explosive growth of the over-the-counter derivatives market.
That was then. These days, Ms. Born is convinced of Mr. Gensler’s reformist zeal, as he takes on Wall Street in what is becoming one of the fiercest battles over regulation in the postcrisis era.
“I think he is doing very well,” she said in an interview. “He certainly seems to be committed to robust oversight of derivatives and limiting excessive speculation and leverage.”
The proposals championed by Mr. Gensler, if adopted by Congress, would substantially alter what is now a largely unregulated market in over-the-counter derivatives, financial instruments used by companies and investors to protect themselves and bet on moves in variables, like interest rates or currencies, and to speculate.
The proposals include forcing the big banks that sell derivatives to conduct their trades in the open on public exchanges and clear them through central clearinghouses, so that any investor can see the prices that dealers charge their customers. Today, those transactions are bilateral and private.
thinkahol * on 18 Oct 11Martin Luther King - A Time to Break Silence Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church - exactly one year before his death - King delivered Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. In the speech he spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, insisting that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." "Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land." "At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor." Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 -- April 4, 1968), was one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement. A Baptist minist
