Monday, October 20, 2008

Plain Vanilla

Robert Kuttner makes the case that I've been thinking about for a while - get rid of all these complex financial transaction that nobody really understands. Let's go back to the days when banks took in deposits and made loans and investment banks underwrote stocks and bonds. Dump derivatives until the day when Joe Blow can understand them and we can calculate a real value for them.

Kuttner makes the point that if these derivatives were so great for the economy why has GDP grown better in the days of vanilla transactions than in the days of derivatives.

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