The Telegraph notes:
The
former US Federal Reserve chairman told an audience that included some
of the world's most senior financiers that their industry's "single
most important" contribution in the last 25 years has been automatic
telling machines, which he said had at least proved "useful".
Echoing FSA chairman Lord Turner's comments that banks are "socially
useless", Mr Volcker told delegates who had been discussing how to
rebuild the financial system to "wake up". He said credit default swaps
and collateralised debt obligations had taken the economy "right to the
brink of disaster" and added that the economy had grown at "greater
rates of speed" during the 1960s without such products.
When
one stunned …