Problem Rooted in Leadership

Carl Icahn,billionaire investor and Chairman of Icahn Associates,thinks that the real problem is how we Americans treat our executives.They are more accountable overseas.Investors are getting the short end of the stick.The boards of directors aren't doing their job.I think that the crisis you have today is a problem of trust,Mr.Icahn said.The reason it's such an exacerbated problem is all these derivatives.The market has gone down a toboggan path.The simple solution is,you guarantee the banks' unsecured debt on the balance sheet.What I've been doing is watching and worrying,but bank debt is extremely cheap.There are also some stocks that are extremely undervalued.In a normal recession,there wouldn't be this preponderance of margin calls.A margin call is a stock sale forced by a creditor if he or she thinks you won't be able to pay him back the money you borrowed to buy the stock.There are trillions of dollars of derivatives out there,the candid Mr.Icahn pointed out.