UK Parliament issues scathing report on bankers

Digested version:  bankers ignorant, reckless.  The Treasury committee of the Parliament has now issued its report after hearings conducted in 2007.  Readers’ Digest version:  bankers and credit rating agencies were ignorant, reckless.  As reported by the Telegraph, today’s report says that banks had not understood the financial products they were buying and selling.  “The committee singled out Lord Aldington, chairman of the Deutsche Bank’s London branch, who declined to explain the difference between a CDO and a CDO-squared when he appeared before them.”  The committee also lambasted the credit rating agencies for not responding earlier to the crisis in the US sub-prime mortgage market, and for alarming investors by making large downgrades at the height of the crisis.  Read the full report (pdf) here: 

parliamentbanks0308.pdf