When congress had debated financial regulatory reform in 2010, it considered imposing government rules on the trading of derivatives. Trading in some kinds of derivatives (particularly those whose value was tied to mortgages), which were largely unregulated at the time, had profoundly destabilized the U.S. and world economies in 2008, and Congress sought to avoid a similar situation in the future. For this reason, it sought to extend government oversight. Unlike stocks and bonds, which were traded on public exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange, most derivative deals were private agreements between two parties. Congress proposed instead that derivatives be traded in public “clearinghouse” run by intermediaries, were regulators could scrutinize these transactions.