I'd like to see a little more action on the energy side of things. I've been pushing for some kind of a carbon tax for years, and it seems to me we've had lots of opportunities to do it.
Robert F. EngleCredit default swap gives you something to do. You can buy some credit default swaps from them to protect yourself against the bankruptcy of people who owe you money.
Robert F. EngleThe collateralized debt obligation, the CDO, is a structure which allows you to more or less continuously choose how much risk you want to take in a whole batch of securities. And the reason why they got us into so much trouble is that it's hard to figure out how much risk you really are taking.
Robert F. EngleI mean, we've always had gold bugs, but now we sort of realize that Treasure Bills might be in the same category. And we have derivatives like credit default swaps which are in this category, and we have derivatives like volatilities that are actually an asset class that we can invest in which are now - would out perform if we have another financial crisis.
Robert F. EngleWhen large companies take on risk, then they impose risks on the rest of the system. And these are systemic risks and these systemic risks we never used to think were really that important, but as soon as we recognize how the financial sector - the risks the financial sector takes on can impact the entire global economy, we realize that those risks needed to be controlled for the social good.
Robert F. EngleI think that's something that investment banks have worried about for a long time and are continuing to worry about, but it's not an easy solution when you have lots of people betting the company's money, how do you really allocate those risks? How do you make sure that the people that take the risks are feeling the risks in an appropriate kind of fashion?
Robert F. Engle