A.F.R. Transparency Panel coming up on Friday in D.C.
I’m preparing for a short trip to D.C. this week to take part in a day-long event held by Americans for Financial Reform. You can get the announcement here online, but I’m not sure what the finalized schedule of the day is going to be. Also, I believe it will be recorded, but I don’t know the details yet.
In any case, I’m psyched to be joining this, and the AFR are great guys doing important work in the realm of financial reform.
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Opening Wall Street’s Black Box: Pathways to Improved Financial Transparency
Sponsored By Americans for Financial Reform and Georgetown University Law Center
Keynote Speaker: Gary Gensler Chair, Commodity Futures Trading Commission
October 11, 2013 10 AM – 3 PM
Georgetown Law Center, Gewirz Student Center, 12th Floor
120 F Street NW, Washington, DC (Judiciary Square Metro) (Space is limited. Please RSVP to AFRtransparencyrsvp@gmail.com)
The 2008 financial crisis revealed that regulators and many sophisticated market participants were in the dark about major risks and exposures in our financial system. The lack of financial transparency enabled large-scale fraud and deception of investors, weakened the stability of the financial system, and contributed to the market failure after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Five years later, despite regulatory efforts, it’s not clear how much the situation has improved.
Join regulators, market participants, and academic experts for an exploration of the progress made – and the work that remains to be done – toward meaningful transparency on Wall Street. How can better information and disclosure make the financial system both fairer and safer?
Panelists include:
| Jesse Eisinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times and Pro Publica |
| Zach Gast, Head of financial sector research, Center on Financial Research and Analysis |
| Amias Gerety, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the FSOC, United States Treasury |
| Henry Hu, Alan Shivers Chair in the Law of Banking and Finance, University of Texas Law School |
| Albert “Pete” Kyle, Charles E. Smith Professor of Finance, University of Maryland |
| Adam Levitan, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center |
| Antoine Martin, Vice President, New York Federal Reserve Bank |
| Brad Miller, Former Representative from North Carolina; Of Counsel, Grais & Ellsworth |
| Cathy O’Neil, Senior Data Scientist, Johnson Research Labs; Occupy Alternative Banking |
| Gene Phillips, Director, PF2 Securities Evaluation |
| Greg Smith, Author of “Why I Left Goldman Sachs”; former Goldman Sachs Executive Director |
mathbabe 
That reminds me of another problem with regulators. They should be situated where the markets and major users (the ones who need to be regulated) are: New York City and Chicago. Not D.C.
Bear F’n Stearns used to have their traders in NYC and their compliance out in Whippany, NJ. A lot of good that did. Not!
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Say hello to Gary for me. There’s a slight chance that he remembers me from when we were undergraduates together at Penn.
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You go girl, looks like you have some very interesting company on that panel:) It’s not detailed but ran across an article I thought was pretty good, “There are lies, damn lies, and Big Data” “We can now make catastrophic miscalculations in nanoseconds and broadcast them universally”
http://www.thewisemarketer.com/news/read.asp?lc=n76693hx4073zy
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I will watch the panel discussion on Youtube if it’s recorded there.
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If transparency means more information, then it isn’t particularly helpful. There’s an old piece by Malcolm Gladwell that nicely discriminates between problems of too little and those of too much information (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/08/070108fa_fact). One thread in Michael Lewis’s The Big Short applies a similar framework to the financial crisis.
I’d be very interested if the panel has useful thoughts on what the right type of transparency would be.
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Great point. I’ll be sure to make it on Friday.
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