Getting your player ready...
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday sent Congress legislation seeking to impose broad new oversight on derivatives, the complex financial instruments blamed for hastening the global economic crisis.
The plan is designed to bring transparency to, and prevent manipulation in, a $600 trillion unregulated worldwide market.
Credit-default swaps, a form of insurance against loan defaults, account for about $60 trillion of that market. The collapse of the swaps brought the downfall of Wall Street banking house Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and nearly toppled American International Group Inc. last fall, prompting the government to support the insurance conglomerate with about $180 billion.
