Jean-Claude Juncker Quotes
The Luxembourg financial centre is based on several pillars, we are characterised by the breadth of our product range, we are an active participant in the international credit business.
Juncker, Jean-Claude. "State of the Nation Address." Government of Luxembourg, 2010.
During this crises, the taxpayers of America had to bail out most of the largest banks in the country whose profligate investment strategy had squandered their depositors and other customers money as a result of the spiral to reap higher and higher profits until they collapsed with the executives making millions in bonuses when their banks were losing money. They put millions of people out of work, and their greedy policies crashed the housing market and then the same banks evicted millions of families when the banks foreclosed on their mortgages with thousands of bank officers committing felonies in the foreclosure processes. This was to Blankfiein and many of the other leading bankers, “God’s Work”.
It was the souped up nature of the credit default swaps that was in part responsible for the souped up melt down of the economy of 2008 and the great recession thereafter. A credit default swap is an insurance policy that a company will pay off its bonds and not go bankrupt. It is a cross between an insurance mechanism and a stock exchange type security mechanism and through heavy lobbying escaped any kind of regulation. It cost a company no money to write a credit default swap and they were paid to do so. As long as business and the economy was good, it was a terrific business but there was no way of ever knowing how much risk they were taking. So companies who wrote credit default swaps did not have to have the money to pay to back them up if they business was bad. When that happened in 2008 even the largest insurance company in the world collapsed because of the risk of having to pay the credit default swap and the U. S. Government had to take over the insurance company. In 2010, the Obama administration passed a financial reform bill that began to regulate credit default swaps.
The savings and loan crises became clear shortly thereafter.
Modern finance is so complex and convoluted, that any laws or regulations that government makes are quickly evaded by even more complex and convoluted schemes which the legislators and regulators have to try and control. By the time they learn and understand and finally develop measures to regulate those, the cycle starts again. Hence the “fool’s errand”
Jean-Claude Juncker is a Luxembourgish politician who served as the 23rd Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013, as Minister for Finances from 1989 to 2009, and as President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019.
