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.Over the following months & years,each of the firms would take advantage of the looser rules.At Bear Stearns,the leverage ratio rose sharply to 33 to 1. |
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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of (more...)