Having attended various lectures by academics, regulators, central bankers and investors in the opening weeks of 2010, and being surprised at the diversity of views among the experts, I thought to look back at the 2008 credit crisis in a bit more detail to see what I missed. I tried to look back at the

The equity markets have been weak on the sovereign risk scares in Greece, Spain and Portugal. As much as this, employment numbers in the US have now come in below forecast in the last 4 weeks. People out of work tend to stop their efforts in December as the year comes to a close because

January 2010 was a bad month for investing. Markets fell from equities to credit to commodities. The USD was strong by default. Fears of a sovereign default by Greece was blamed for the general de-risking.

The US owes China 1 trillion bucks. Is it any surprise that China wants a stronger USD? The US government is broke. China cannot buy CDS protection on the US. It would have to buy it from a strong credit. Which counterparty could write 1 trillion USD worth of protection? Well, China, but that’s stupid. The

There is an opportunity here to eschew heavy handed regulation. The public are clearly incensed at the behaviour of the bankers and prop traders. The people are disappointed at the level of diligence and care that their bankers have applied in the conduct of their businesses. The opportunity exists today for regulators to demand nothing