Allowing short selling is allowing people to sell - instead of having to buy the stock and then sell it, which doesn't do much; allow them to sell it, and then buy it. In which case they can express that information and the idea is that you would get more accurate valuation of companies by letting people express both their positive information and their negative information through either long or short selling.
Robert F. EngleRisk managers and investment bankers and actually, all kinds of investors took on more risk than they expected. So there was a failure of risk management. There was a failure to recognize how much risk there was in some of these securities that people bought.
Robert F. EngleA lot of ambitious code has been written into the law for those and we will have to see if it actually works, if we have another example of a big financial institution going bankrupt.
Robert F. EngleI don't see what the alternative to risk management is. If it's just getting rid of the models and instead using the smart people who can figure it out? How do you train them? What do you teach them? Do you just put them in a cockpit and let them stumble for 10 years of their life and then after that they're good at it?
Robert F. EngleI'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. 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. Engle