England, an acclaimed financial journalist, has described the root causes of the crisis and the harrowing events that toppled institutions and markets in his new non-fiction financial thriller, “Black Box Casino: How Wall Street’s Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance” (ISBN: 978-0313392894; hardcover; Praeger). The author’s remarks have been posted at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRZI5BvgPro .

“Something had gone terribly wrong to deliver us into the world of Mad Max, where the norms we thought necessary for society had vanished,” Mr. England said. “We saw financial institutions crashing all around us while authorities seemed powerless to do anything about it.”

England, who covered the crisis as senior writer for Mortgage Banking magazine, recounted how the mortgage banking industry was transformed from one ruled by the discipline of the “invisible fist” of the free markets in the early 1990s to one that had generated $4.7 trillion in risky assets by mid-2008.

Chief among the villains England cited is Congress for enacting a regulatory regime for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 1992 that put rules in place that rewarded politicians for demanding ever-rising affordable housing goals achieved through ever-declining lending standards. Fannie and Freddie were given weak financial standards and a weak regulator who could not compel them to take steps needed to ensure their safety and soundness.

After accounting scandals emerged at both Fannie and Freddie in the early 2000s, top-level officials were not held to account by Washington and walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains. This “sent a dangerous signal, I think, to others who contemplated fraudulent schemes. Rewards could be huge and the potential downside limited,” the author said.

England also faulted the Securities and Exchange Commission for its lax enforcement of laws against fraud and market manipulation and recounted how naked short sellers engaged in illegal activity that brought down first Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers.

England also cast a light on the foibles of Wall Street. “Merrill Lynch and Citigroup were the kings of CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and bear much of the blame for the crisis,” he said. The subprime CDO was “the biggest bait and switch of all time” because it turned low-rated subprime mortgage bonds into AAA credits, which were then sold to many unwary Asian and European investors, England said.

An excerpt from England remarks: The demand from CDOs for weaker subprime credits – usually only a fraction of each deal – had a perverse effect. It greatly increased demand for mortgage lenders to increase the volume of overall subprime and risky mortgages to supply the bonds needed for the CDOs. In short, the subprime CDO business was poisoning the private label mortgage-backed securities business. In an outcome James Bond villain Goldfinger would love, Wall Street was creating a flow of funds into the mortgage industry in search of bad credits.

For more information on Black Box Casino and England, visit http://www.robertstoweengland.com .

News Source: Robert Stowe England :: This press release was issued on behalf of the news source by Send2Press® Newswire, a service of Neotrope®. View all current news at: http://Send2PressNewswire.com .

The OASIS Inspection System is driven by its own proprietary software that powers the system to operate at very high inspection speeds. New to the system is a strobe light source that creates the part shadow to be measured, and is controlled by the OASIS software to pulse light in micro-second bursts that effectively stops action. Couple that with a strobe rate of 6 bursts per second, synchronized with the shutter on the digital camera, and the result is the OASIS’ ability to measure all external dimensions in under a second — all without the part ever needing to stop.

In yet another newly released feature geared toward speed, one-click reporting now instantly takes all measurements and exports them to SPC programs or the OASIS report spreadsheet.

“The speed of the Oasis has reduced our inspection time to seconds per component; reducing the need for a dedicated inspector doing audits and allowing the operator to inspect each component 100 percent. This has resulted in real-time data acquisition that helps manage tool wear and keeps the process stable during operation. The Oasis is the perfect inspection system to reduce inspection labor and is a great tool to monitor process operations,” said Daniel Proveaux, Quality Assurance Manager, Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, COQE Certified Quality Manager, Goodrich Corporation – Bamberg, South Carolina.

About George Products Company, Inc.:

Founded in 1951 and located in Middletown, Delaware, George Products Company is the manufacturer of the OASIS Inspection System. The OASIS is a full-featured machine vision inspection system designed to measure multiple profile dimensions on parts, accurate to +/- 0.0001-inches, with all the measurements done in less than a second.

For more information, visit: www.GeorgeProducts.com .

News Source: George Products Company, Inc. :: This press release was issued by Send2Press® and is Copyright © 2010 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.