Gerald Corrigan, the veteran former president of the New York Federal Reserve, has in recent days been assembling a number of senior Wall Street figures to study the recent credit turmoil and to propose some remedies. The report, due in july, will be known as CRMPG III and follows Corrigan's original Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group Report that followed the LTCM crisis and a subsequent one three years ago that listed a series of steps that banks needed to take to improve the infrastructure of finance.

The report is due to cover four key areas:

- Risk Management systems
- Trading of complex financial products
- Accounting rules
- Financial system infrastructure

However he suggests that of all of the four key areas "..the issue which is far and away the most complicated is financial infrastructure...there are a lot of issues here. For example, we clearly need to improve our understanding and risk mitigation associated with closing out (CDS) contracts after a default. I think we also have to think about whether we need some form of automated clearing house for OTC derivatives with particular emphasis on the CDS sector.."

Not quite sure what ISDA will make of this as they have long campaigned against the tightening of public controls over the OTC market. We shall have to wait for the report to see...