The Woman Who Could Have Prevented This Financial Mess Was Silenced by Greenspan, Rubin and Summers

More than a decade ago, a woman you're likely never to have heard of, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading -- was the oracle whose warnings about the dangerous boom in derivatives trading just might have averted the calamitous bust now engulfing the US and global markets. Instead she was met with scorn, condescension and outright anger by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers.

As some commenters to the article point out, reigning in derivatives wouldn't likely have prevented the bubble and collapse, but certainly it was made worse for lack of even basic regulation of these instruments. The financial fallout (as contrasted from real economy) is also disproportionately due to derivatives.