...Enablers of Exuberance Jennifer S. Taub Sept. 4, 2009 DISCUSSION DRAFT Enablers of Exuberance: Legal Acts and Omissions that Facilitated the Global Financial Crisis Jennifer S. Taub1 I. Introduction This paper explores certain legal acts and omissions that facilitated the over-leveraging and near collapse of the global financial system. These ―Legal Enablers‖ fostered the boom that enriched a class of financial intermediaries who followed a storied tradition of gambling away ―other people‘s money.‖2 These mechanisms also made the pain of the bust disproportionately felt by the middle class and poor while shielding the middlemen who created the problems. These legal Enablers permitted the growth of a shadow banking system, without investment limits, transparency or government oversight. In the shadows grew a variety of highly leveraged private investment pools, undercapitalized conduits of securitized loans and speculation in complex credit derivatives. The rationale for allowing this unregulated, parallel system was that it helped to create innovation and provide liquidity. The conventional wisdom was that any risks associated with a hands-off approach could be managed by the ―invisible hand‖3 of the market. In other words, instead of public police, it relied upon private gatekeepers. A legal framework including legislation, rules and court decisions supported this system. This legal structure depended upon corporate managers, counterparties, ―sophisticated investors‖ and the...
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...HOW CAPITALISM WILL SAVE US Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer is Today's Economy S T E V E FORBES and E L I Z A B E T H A M E S HOW CAPITALISM WILL SAVE US HOW CAPITALISM WILL SAVE US W h y Free People and Free Markets A r e t h e Best A n s w e r i n Today's E c o n o m y Steve Forbes AND ELIZABETH AMES CROWN BUSINESS ALSO BY STEVE FORBES Power Ambition Glory (coauthored with John Prevas) Flat Tax Revolution A New Birth of Freedom To the millions of individuals whose energy, innovation, and resilience built the Real World economy. Their enterprise, when unleashed, is always the answer. Copyright © 2009 by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and CROWN and the Rising Sun colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Forbes, Steve, 1947How capitalism will save us / Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes index. 1. Capitalism—United States. 2. United States—Economic policy. 3. United States—Economic conditions. I. Ames, Elizabeth. II. Title. HB501.F646 2009 330.12'20973—dc22 2009032751 ISBN 978-0-307-46309-8 Printed in the United States of America DESIGN BY BARBARA S T U R M A N 1O 9 8 7...
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...Begin Reading Table of Contents Photos Newsletters Copyright Page In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. For Isabella and Calista Stone When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. —Jeff Bezos, commencement speech at Princeton University, May 30, 2010 Prologue In the early 1970s, an industrious advertising executive named Julie Ray became fascinated with an unconventional public-school program for gifted children in Houston, Texas. Her son was among the first students enrolled in what would later be called the Vanguard program, which stoked creativity and independence in its students and nurtured expansive, outside-the-box thinking. Ray grew so enamored with the curriculum and the community of enthusiastic teachers and parents that she set out to research similar schools around the state with an eye toward writing a book about...
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