Bart Chilton, a commissioner of the US futures regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has attacked the regulatory foresight of President Bush’s administration in a speech to the Environmental Markets Association.
Chilton told delegates at the Seattle conference on Wednesday November 19 that the US faced a “buffet of problems”, which he attributed to failed polices by the US president.
“What is most frustrating to many of us is that government could have and should have seen our economic problems coming,” Chilton said.
He said the cause of the financial crisis was a lack of regulation, insisting that: “free marketers – those who blindly supported the concept of a totally free market with as little government regulation or intervention as possible –...