In this enlightening podcast, University of Maryland Professor Michael Greenberger explains to Fresh Air’s Terry Gross some of the origins of the current mortgage-related losses and write-downs impacting Wall Street. Credit default swaps, or bets on whether mortgage holders would default, are today unregulated at both the Federal and State level due to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, a 262 page bill passed by Congress in 2000, right before its 2000 Christmas recess. According to Greenberger, banks have also been careful to word their credit default swap contracts to avoid falling under insurance industry regulations. “It’s as if a bunch of Las Vegas bookies started taking bets, and never bothered to write them down or record them……here, these banks didn’t bother to hedge themselves…..we would have been better off if Las Vegas had handled this operation, than having Bear Stearns handle it,” asserted Greenberger.