Controlling Dangerous Financial Products through a Financial Pre-Cautionary Principle

High risk, opaque, and extremely complex financial products such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps have been among the key causes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Regulators, buyers, and even many issuers of these investor or capital market products (as distinct from consumer products) did not understand how they worked in calm times, much less in times of extreme market stress. Not only have these products helped cause the crisis but they have also made the crisis extremely difficult to resolve. In response, building on the analogy of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a number of analysts have proposed a requirement that financial products be approved by a government regulatory authority the Financial Stability and Product Safety Aministration (FSPSA), before they can be marketed.