deregulation

nytimes.com — “Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.” — Alan Greenspan in 2004

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mcclatchydc.com — One Wall Street bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and another, Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America for $50 billion. Earlier this year, the government helped enable the sale of Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan Chase, and more recently took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Such troubles were supposed to have been prevented, or at least mitigated, by regulatory systems put in place after the banking system collapsed at the start of the Great Depression. But by the 1970s, a stumbling U.S. economy led to a change in America's political-economic values. Ronald Reagan led a movement that came to power in 1980 proclaiming faith in free markets and mistrust of government. That conservative philosophy has dominated America for the past 28 years.

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ft.com — Billionaire investor George Soros is to tell U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday that "a bubble in the making" is under way in oil and other commodities and that commodity indexes are not a legitimate asset class for institutional investors. He is expected to tell a congressional committee that rising oil prices are the result of a number of fundamental changes and factors in the market, but that the relatively recent ability of investment institutions to invest in the futures market through index funds is exaggerating price rises and creating an oil market bubble.

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washingtonpost.com — During continued volatility in oil prices, federal regulators said that they had been investigating crude oil trading, storage and transportation for the past six months with a focus on possible "futures market manipulation." The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which normally keeps investigations confidential, said in a statement that it was "taking the extraordinary step of disclosing this investigation because of today's unprecedented market conditions." Those conditions have sent oil prices to record heights, adding to the U.S. trade deficit, hurting consumers and companies, and weighing heavily on the nation's economy.

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reuters.com — The lives of 22,000 patients could have been saved if U.S. regulators had been quicker to remove a Bayer AG drug used to stem bleeding during open heart surgery, according to a medical researcher interviewed by CBS Television's 60 Minutes program.

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