Go into Yahoo and type in “Understanding the Financial Crisis”. A list of seventy four books will appear. Some of those works are written by authors known to you and I because of their media experience. Gretchen Morgenson wrote “Reckless Endangerment”. Nouriel Roubini wrote “Crisis Economics”. Peter Schiff, Paul Krugman, and Matt Taibbi also have penned works on this 2008 financial fiasco.
I do not want this column to bore you with a bunch of statistics and history. I do, however, feel that a little background work has been necessary to lay the foundation that will motivate you to seek more of the answers to the many questions created by this column.
The private derivatives problem, as we know it today, began growing back in the early to mid 1990s. These contracts can be mathematically complicated and have a bunch of hypothetical “what ifs” attached to them. Few journalists could report intelligently on the subject, so we never saw information about them…..much to the delight of their creators.
One person, however, was reporting on private derivatives through his own publications 20 years ago. You won’t believe it when I tell you who it is. Does the name Lyndon LaRouche ring a bell to a few of you? You youngsters should look him up. What a controversial character!
Take out a little time for yourselves and go back and reread my previous commentaries. Get to the library and check out one or more of those seventy four books. Next week we shall begin an effort to connect a few more of the dots. I bet some of you super sleuths out there already have drawn a few of those lines. Are you shocked? Some of the great offenders do a lot of advertising, don’t they!