Here’s one from the “Gee Thanks!” department.
It comes about 5 years too late, which isn’t bad for government work.
From APb by Jeannine Aversa entitled: Bernanke: Banks must get better at foreseeing risk
“Commercial banks and other financial institutions need to beef up their ability to detect and protect themselves against risks like the credit and mortgage debacles, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday.
The trio of crises — housing, credit and financial — have exposed weaknesses in financial firms’ so-called risk-management practices. That is their ability to sufficiently detect and hedge against risks. Banks and other financial players have racked up multibillion-dollar losses when investments in complex mortgage-backed securities soured with the collapse of the housing market. Credit problems in housing quickly spread to other areas, intensifying the turmoil.
“Improvements in banks’ risk management will provide a more-stable financial system by making firms more resilient to shocks,” Bernanke said in a speech to a Federal Reserve banking conference in Chicago.
Better risk management huh? What a brilliant idea!
Gee thanks Ben.
By the way, it would also probably be a good idea if the people in charge of protecting consumers from these greedy banks took their jobs more seriously too.
The sad part is that all of this could have been avoided if someone stepped in five years ago.
Someone like the Federal Reserve!
