And you are here why?

Matt Cameron has an article over at Risk (paywall. sorry...) about a weird side-effect of Dodd-Frank, viz., the requirements that (most) derivatives get cleared over the counter, said side-effect being that Banks are not accepting Pension-funds as clients. I know, you're probably hopping w/ excitement about this - but bear with me it is kinda interesting and does have some pretty serious ramifications.  To summarize • There is a lot of money in pension funds out there - around $10 trillion in the U.S . alone, and quite possibly double that worldwide . • In the U.S., pension funds are governed by ERISA , which has all sorts of fun rules involving what happens in case of bankruptcies (who gets what money, etc.) • Pension funds invest their money in all sorts of ways, everything from simple stuff - buying stock in company X - through Private Equity into Hedge Funds and finally at wacky complex derivatives, whatever.  Mind you, this is worthy of a post all unto itself, but...

Barry Ritholz sez - Most of the World Wants More Bank Regulation : That is what survey after survey around the globe shows that the world’s populations wants. Despite a relentless propaganda campaign of misinformation, fabricated data and false narratives, the public has not been fooled by the 1%. The best efforts of a well funded group of ideologues — Free Market absolutists, anti-Democracy and Randians — these pro-corporate radicals has not yet succeeded in fooling all of the world’s population all of the time. How do we know this? A 25 country survey last year by Edelman. They asked the question: “ When it comes to government regulation of business, do you think that your government regulates business too much, not enough or about the right amount? ” ... One major caveat : I would imagine the major events of the past few years probably has people thinking of disasters in specific industries: Banking , Energy Exploration and Nuclear Power . If the questions were asked abo...