Kenneth J. Gruneisen

You've Gotta Have Friends: How Bear Stearns Dodged Misvaluation Charges

After a 21+ year career as a licensed stockbroker, I am now thoroughly convinced that we are destined to have "unprecedented" occurrances in the financial markets every several years. The regulators have repeatedly proven themselves (long before I came along) inept at protecting the public from suffering massive investment losses. The regulators show up with temporary fixes and hasty rule changes on short notice (without a period of taking input from the industry and the public) only after a crisis develops - their job is oversee that markets remain "fair and orderly", and they do a miserable job!

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. The fingers always point to "greedy Wall Street crooks" as the cause of the "problems" when things start unravelling. During the years of prosperity (on the way up) nobody from the media ever does a story praising the hard-working people on Wall Street for what they are doing.

Isn't it intesting how John Snow (former Treasury secy) , Alan Greenspan (former Fed Chairman), and a bunch of other very knowledgeable, respected, and well-connected people obviously saw long ago that sticking around was not the thing to do. Why decide to resign a very prestigious position? To go out on top, and be out of the public eye (and probably profiting immensely) while the proverbial stink hits the fan!