The most shocking revelation in Ron Suskind's "Confidence Men," the expose of Obama's economic policy making, is on page 396 where it is reported that in late 2009-- over a year after Wall Street imploded and required a massive federal bailout-- more than half of Morgan Stanley's derivatives book was uncollateralized, meaning that it was terribly unprotected should disaster impact the values of those derivatives trades. This was roughly equivalent to playing Russian roulette or another hari-kari moment in financial history. This unsafe manner of the money game was roughly similar to AIG having $500 billion credit default swaps on its books in September 2008 without hedging one dollar of the risk involved and without any capital reserves to protect the insurance giant. AIG required a bailout of $186 billion to protect it from bankruptcy.
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