John C. Bogle: Financial Reform: Will it Forestall a Future Crisis of Ethic Proportions?

The financial reform act that was signed into law this week -- while imperfect -- represents an important first step in attempting to preclude or mitigate future financial collapses. But increased regulation and oversight alone will be insufficient to prevent a recurrence of the recent financial crisis.

The causes of the collapse are no secret. While it is often claimed that "victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan," the defeat suffered by investors in our devastating financial crisis seems to have, figuratively speaking, a thousand fathers. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates too low for too long after the 2000-2002 stock market crash, and failed to impose discipline on mortgage bankers. Not only did our commercial and investment banks design and sell trillions of dollars worth of incredibly complex and risky mortgage-backed bonds and tens of trillions of dollars worth of derivatives (largely credit default swamps) based upon those bonds, they were also left holding the bag, with many of these toxic derivatives held on balance sheets that were highly leveraged -- sometimes by as much as 33 to one or more. Just do the math; a mere three percent decline in asset value wipes out 100 percent of shareholder equity.