Finance Superstars Talk About the Massive Fraud in Our Economic System @corydig

"Make Markets Be Markets" conference of financial reform all-stars offers an alternative to Washington's disastrous oversight of the economy.

Last Wednesday, I attended a conference initiated by the Roosevelt Institute on the financial mess, called Make Markets Be Markets. The conference's speakers included people with experience on Wall Street, the banking industry, government and academia; Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, Elizabeth Warren, and other luminaries who have offered an alternative and reformist narrative to our recent financial crisis.  At two and half hours, it was relatively short, giving each speaker the opportunity to make their points and providing a sharp focus. One underlying theme of the event was fraud, the great elephant in the room, that neither the press or our government officials acknowledge, though it is a fundamental element to the financial crisis and its solutions.

Joe Stiglitz started the conference and stated how reducing transparency and hiding information was an essential element to the crisis. Stiglitz concluded, "Innovation was regulator and tax arbitrage." Wall Street and the banks deliberately added opacity and complexity to confuse clients and consumers. Elizabeth Warren pointed out, "complexity made a lot of profits," for example, she showed how the average credit card contract in 1980 was one page, today it is thirty.

rest at http://www.alternet.org/economy/145942/finance_superstars_talk_about_the_massive_fraud_in_our_economic_system