The truth as always lies somewhere in the middle!
Sir Michael Skapinker in "The market no longer has all the answers" April 25 writes that though the hands-off regulatory policies have clearly been discredited even in the eyes of hardnosed free-market fans no one knows what to do now and that "Trawling leftwing and far-left wing websites is instructive, because they clearly have not got a clue either".
May I invite Mr Skapinker to trawl the radical middle too? From the middle we protest the sheer thought of the financial sector having had a hands-off regulatory policy since in our view never before has the financial sector been so much nannied as with the empowerment of the credit agencies as the officially outsourced regulatory risk surveyors. Had these agencies not worked undercover as private agencies I am sure all hell would have broken out long ago.
But from the middle we also protest any deepening of the regulations that starts without taking a huge step back and realizing that to regulate the banks, with the sole objective of avoiding a bank crisis, as it has been done for almost two decades now, is totally meaningless.
We need banks to do much more for society than simply avoid risks and survive and therefore we need to clearly define what their whole purpose is. How on earth could you regulate without doing that?
May I invite Mr Skapinker to trawl the radical middle too? From the middle we protest the sheer thought of the financial sector having had a hands-off regulatory policy since in our view never before has the financial sector been so much nannied as with the empowerment of the credit agencies as the officially outsourced regulatory risk surveyors. Had these agencies not worked undercover as private agencies I am sure all hell would have broken out long ago.
But from the middle we also protest any deepening of the regulations that starts without taking a huge step back and realizing that to regulate the banks, with the sole objective of avoiding a bank crisis, as it has been done for almost two decades now, is totally meaningless.
We need banks to do much more for society than simply avoid risks and survive and therefore we need to clearly define what their whole purpose is. How on earth could you regulate without doing that?
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