TIL Alan Greenspan admitted he was wrong about unregulated financial markets

Interest rates were regulated. The unregulated market was in Credit Default Swaps, which are insurance on bonds. Those were completely unregulated contracts between private entities. The CFTC tried to regulate CDS in the late 1990s, but Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and future Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers all intervened with Congress (and President Clinton's blessing) to prevent regulation. The CDS are what the Great Financial Crisis so bad.

Born was appointed to the CFTC on April 15, 1994 by President Bill Clinton. Due to litigation against Bankers Trust Company by Procter and Gamble and other corporate clients, Born and her team at the CFTC sought comments on the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives,[4] a first step in the process of writing CFTC regulations to supplement the existing regulations of the Federal Reserve System, the Options Clearing Corporation, and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Born was particularly concerned about swaps, financial instruments that are traded over the counter between banks, insurance companies or other funds or companies, and thus have no transparency except to the two counterparties and the counterparties' regulators, if any. CFTC regulation was strenuously opposed by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and by Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.[5] On May 7, 1998, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt joined Rubin and Greenspan in objecting to the issuance of the CFTC’s concept release. Their response dismissed Born's analysis and focused on the hypothetical possibility that CFTC regulation of swaps and other OTC derivative instruments could create a "legal uncertainty" regarding such financial instruments, hypothetically reducing the value of the instruments. They argued that the imposition of regulatory costs would "stifle financial innovation" and encourage financial capital to transfer its transactions offshore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born#Born_and_the_OTC_derivatives_market

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