September 2009 Comment: The three certainties in life are death, taxes, and unrelenting financial "innovation"...

In 1789 it was famously stated by Benjamin Franklin that there were two certainties in life -- death and taxes. The utterance became an instant classic, and has been resonating for over two hundred years as an unshakable idiom in popular culture.

But move over, Death and Taxes... As the latest financial crisis fueled by exotic financial derivatives now has policy makers and regulators worldwide swatting around like a badminton shuttlecock a flurry of new restrictions and new programs for heightened governmental supervision and oversight, this one additional item remains equally certain. That is, commercial financial institutions have an indomitable determination to innovate ever new fabrications of investment schemes with financial derivatives designed simply, with all prudence aside, to stay one precarious step beyond the reach of the regulators (and thus setting the stage inevitably for the next crisis.)