Policitians are often scared to use the “R” word, because a recession makes them unpopular. Investment bankers dislike the “R” word too, but in this case it stands for regulation.
Regulation and lots of it is being cooked up in Washington and Brussels in response to the excessive risk-taking that helped bring on the credit crisis.
Credit derivatives are in the firing line as the bad guys of the credit crisis and derivatives in energy and commodities could get caught in the cross-fire.
Oil could also take a hit after rampant speculation was blamed for driving the price to a record of nearly $150 a barrel last year.
Although the quest to get rid of excesses is driven by good intentions, industry insiders say there will be unintended consequences and argue the regulators could have underestimated the difficulty of their task.
“It’s not easy to bring back the genie into the bottle,” Libya’s top oil official Shokri Ghanem told the Reuters Global Energy Summit.
Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Don’t mention the R word
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Posted by: Jane Merriman
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