See our cover story on former chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Brooksley Born.
Notional value of the derivatives market at the end of 2002: $106 trillion
Value of derivatives outstanding as of the first half of 2008: $531.2 trillion
Year in which Brooksley Born first sounded the alarm about the unregulated growth of the derivatives market: 1997
Congressional hearings at which Born testified about the risks of unregulated derivatives: 17
Percentage decrease in the S&P 500 index in 2008: 40
Years in which the market suffered a worse decline:: 1
Sources: International Swaps and Derivatives Association; Congressional Hearings; Standard & Poor’s
