Remember when Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) was the biggest meltdown in recent financial history? Probably not. 1998 seems a long time ago and the multiple billions of dollars that have evaporated in the Enron and WorldCom scandals make the $1bn lost in the collapse of the LTCM hedge fund seem paltry by comparison.
Yet in the wake of the LTCM collapse, there was just as much demand for further regulatory oversight of hedge funds as there is today for increased regulatory oversight of the types of structured finance and accounting practices that are said to underlie the problems at Enron and WorldCom. Oddly, given that the chief protagonists are from the US, there is particular focus on the offshore financial centres as somehow the villains of the piece.
