The crisis, Fed, Quants and stochastic optimal control

The Dodd–Frank (D–F) Financial Reform Bill authorizes the Federal Reserve to monitor the financial services marketplace to identify potential threats to the stability of the US financial system. Alan Greenspan's retrospective indicates what he has learned from the crisis. He argues that the crisis, the housing price bubble, was unpredictable and unavoidable. Greenspan now focuses on desirable capital requirements, or leverage, for banks and financial intermediaries. I explain why the Fed's and Greenspan's views stem from a lack of the appropriate tools of analysis of what is an excessive debt or leverage. The Quants who devised the highly leveraged financial derivatives ignored systemic risk.