Late in the fall of 1988 the accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand (C&L), won a competitive award to construct a computer system that collected the monthly security and loan information relating to Ginnie Mae’s mortgage-backed security program. As a C&L consultant with a math major and a Wharton M.B.A., I was put in charge of testing the system as it was being developed.

Where is Howard Beale when we need him?  Two years into the Greatest Recession Since the Great Depression (GRSGD) and our financial leaders are still telling us that we need to be patient while waiting for our economic recovery.

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me what I would say in an open letter to a group of Independents if they asked me what I thought of the financial reform bill that is currently being considered in Washington. The following is my open letter response to those Independents:

If you didn’t think there was a wink and a nod relationship between large banks and the feds, the “Volcker Rule” should serve as an acknowledgment. Because lending and credit is so crucial to the economy, financial institutions know the government will backstop them during crisis mode in the industry.

By far and away the most common explanation for the current crisis is the relaxed lending standards in the mortgage market, which caused a housing bubble, collapsing the financial system in upon its deregulated self. In this first part, of my multi-part series on the financial crisis, I will evaluate this claim. Did deregulation cause our economy to collapse? The answer is, well kinda.