Sun 2008-08-24 00:00 EDT
Here comes the downsizing of finance
by Martin Hutchinson (Prudent Bear); auction-rate securities (ARS); credit default swaps (CDS); ``CDS market creates many times as much risk as it hedges or transfers''; GSEs ``leveraged more than would have been possible without the governments quasi-guarantee, lobbied like to crazy to ensure they were not properly regulated and collapsed thankfully into the arms of the taxpayer as soon as ill winds began to blow...by their presence they turned the soundest product in financial markets, the home mortgage, into an obscene speculative casino, causing collateral damage of many times their own losses.'' ``much of the financial services innovation of the last generation was spurious and unsound, and needs to be done away with''