Let's Play Insights &
Indictments Jeopardy!

Shah Gilani

Today I want to play a special game I call Insights & Indictments Jeopardy!

It's based on the classic T.V. game show where contestants vie to pose the correct "question" to the answers that are revealed in an array of categories.

For example, let's say the category is "Federal Agencies."

The first "answer" happens to be: "This new organization holds primary responsibility for regulating consumer protection in the United States."

If you ring your buzzer first and shout out the question, "What is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?" you would be right.

Got it?

Okay, let's play Jeopardy!

Today our category is actually going to be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB); see how many you can get right...

1. The CFPB was founded as a result of this July 2010 Wall Street reform and consumer protection act, which was meant to save America from being used and abused by Wall Street crooks and bankers in the future.
2. In a sign that the GOP mostly opposes new powers being granted to the CFPB, this is the number of Republican Senators who actually voted to enact the reform and consumer protection act.
3. When the president nominates an appointee as director of the CFPB, the same act requires this kind of confirmation.
4. This man's appointment yesterday as CFPB director is controversial because he is being seated without the above confirmation
5. This CEO of the American Bankers Association said Obama's move to install the director without the required confirmation complicates efforts of banks, and puts the bureau's actions "in constitutional jeopardy."
6. This Harvard law professor was the principal architect of the CFPB when she was an aide to President Obama and the Treasury Department.
7. Interestingly, the director of the CFPB also gets a seat on the board of this powerful government-backed corporation.
8. In the alarming situation I've just described, S.O.S. stands for this.

Got your answers? Let's see how you did...

Give yourself half credit if you got any part of the long explanation correct and 100% credit if you got most of it right. If you get most of these, but stumble on the last one, don't feel bad. (And you won't, when you find out what it is.) But if you did get the last one right, and even if you didn't get any of the other questions right, congratulations... you are the new champion.

Here are the correct "questions" (along with some explanations).

Shah Gilani

About the Author

Browse Shah's articles | View Shah's research services

Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.

The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.

Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.

Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.

Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.

Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.

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