This week, three of the Bank Whistleblowers United founders, joined me in Dallas, to be on the McCuistion Television program specifically addressing our BWU initiative, what really caused the financial crisis and what must be done now to prevent another. The TV taping went very well and I’ll be sharing the program itself with you in a future post. Unfortunately, due to bronchitis our fourth BWU member, Gary Aguirre was not able to join us.
He and I had been scheduled to be on a panel for The National Center for Policy Analysis, Financial Crisis Initiative the following day. Dennis McCuistion, the host of the TV program and coincidentally NCPA’s Financial Crisis Initiative task force leader invited both Michael Winston and Bill Black to be part of the NCPA panel filling Gary’s place.
The conference focused on the research from the Initiative, of which I am part of as a working group leader, as I explained in my article, “What Caused the 2008 Financial Crisis, Interview with NCPA.” The NCPA project, sponsored by Cary M. Maguire brought together key experts in the field, from Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute and author of Hidden In Plain Sight, to George Selgin with the Cato Institute, Richard Ebeling from the Citadel, and Marianne Jennings, author of The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse, among other experts in banking, business and academics.
We were in very good company. And were able to address our stance with BWU and why we formed it, and what must happen to prevent another financial meltdown. While all contributed to addressing the real causes of the 2008 financial crisis, the key question was “can we prevent the next credit crisis”?
Our colleagues on the various panels talked about regulations, Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ethics and transparency. The key issue and what is the most contentious and challenging is how do we prevent the next financial crisis, which as you know from my stance on these issues is a given, considering the present political finagling and willful ignoring of accountability on the part of all of the agencies involved and the Department of Justice.
The crisis was not caused by a failure of capitalism, greed or Wall Street cronyism. Poor public policy was a root cause and unfortunately we have done little to correct for this. The key question, “can we prevent the next credit crisis?” is a critical one. What public policies must be in place, what incentives, and what roles will ethics and transparency play?
[tweetthis url=http://bit.ly/1Wtve01″]”What really caused the #financialcrisis and what must be done now to prevent another? ~ @RichardMBowen #2008[/tweetthis]
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Richard Bowen is widely known as the Citigroup whistleblower. As Business Chief Underwriter for Citigroup during the housing bubble financial crisis meltdown, he repeatedly warned Citi executive management and the board about fraudulent behavior within the organization. The company certified poor mortgages as quality mortgages and sold them to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other investors.
