When they are employed wisely, derivatives make the world simpler because they give their buyers an ability to manage and transfer risk.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Every regulatory speech on derivatives takes a bow to their hedging 'benefits.' Less publicly, regulators pay their respects to derivative profits, a blessed relief from the banks' troubled loans to less-developed countries, highly leveraged companies, and real estate swingers.
Derivatives in and of themselves are not evil. There's nothing evil about how they're traded, how they're accounted for, and how they're financed, like any other financial instrument, if done properly.
The marginal people on the trading desks, there's no skill set. If they don't trade derivatives, I don't know what they can do. The next stop is driving a cab.
Derivatives trading should be standardized and as much as possible moved to clearinghouses.
The whole market mechanism and its evolution is something that, I'm kind of of the Buffett School. You know, if I see a derivative, I run the other way.
Do we have to regulate derivatives? Yes, we do. 'Cause when I did this in my investments, frankly, no one knew who could pay who. But derivatives have an important place in our economy.
Derivatives are a huge, complex issue.
An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world.
Life can be lived at a remove. You trade in futures, and then you trade in derivatives of futures. Banks make more money trading derivatives than they do trading actual commodities.
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.