[classicman]

From Mercs third link above

"There was an awful lot of, 'Trust us. Leave it alone. We can do it better than government,' without any realistic understanding of the dangers involved," says Harvey Goldschmid, a Columbia University law professor and a former commissioner and general counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He says the bill was passed at the height of Wall Street and Washington's love affair with deregulation, an infatuation that was endorsed by President Clinton at the White House and encouraged by Alan Greenspan.

"The credit default swaps was the key of what went wrong and what's created these enormous losses," Goldschmid says.

"Is it your impression that people at the big Wall Street investment houses knew what was going on and knew the kind of risks that they were exposed to?" Kroft asks.

"No. My impression is to the contrary, that even at senior levels they only vaguely understood the risks. They only vaguely followed what was going on," Goldschmid says. "And when it tumbled, there was some genuine surprise not only at the board level where there wasn't enough oversight but at senior management level."