An Unlikely Guardian

摘要

When the definitive chronicle of America's Great Reces -sion is written, Patrick M. Parkinson will merit more than a footnote. Rewind to the late 1990s. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wanted derivatives kept free of government oversight. He relied on Parkinson, then a midlevel manager in the Fed's division of research and statistics who was especially knowledgeable about how derivatives worked, to help make his case. As Parkinson told Congress in 1999, it was "unnecessary" for the government to supervise over-the-counter derivatives because the companies that trade them "are quite adept at managing credit risks and are more likely to base their investment deci-rnsions on independent judgment." They won the fight when a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.