"...Finance existed to support production, to back real recorded assets. Adam Smith wrote that finance was the wheel that brings in resources from the savers to the producing people who need it.

Then, along came derivatives, together with the opaqueness they encourage, and this well-tested public memory system was allowed to be turned on its head. Partly, thanks to finance-industry-friendly legislation, such as the Commodity Futures Deregulation Act in 1999, a situation arose where derivative contracts no longer had to be recorded, tracked, or even tied to the assets that represented..."

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