January 27, 2009

Desperation is indeed a bad counsel

Sir Peter Boone and Simon Johnson make a proposal for how to re-privatise the de-facto nationalized banks by means of the government receiving and selling warrants which would allow new private equity and shareholders to step in at a more reasonable fiscal cost. To save the banks we must stand up to the bankers, January 27.

That could be, though I remember that one of the reason for the successful Chilean recovery after their bank crisis was that the old shareholders were given a repurchase option, at a price that compensated the government of which I believe many have already been executed.

What I do take exception from is when they express that one of the problems is that the banks would refuse to sell their assets and so “the regulators need to apply without forbearance their existing rules and principles for the marking to market of all illiquid assets. The law must be used against accountants and bank executives who deviate from the rules on capital requirement.” Are they going berserk? Desperation is clearly a bad counsel. Their intention sounds like forcing everyone who owes more on a house than what it is worth to have to walk away from it even if he is willing to stay. Besides, what does market value really signify when markets do not exist?

Actually the truth is that to save our banks we must first stand up to our financial regulators and who are, without doubt, the first to blame for this crisis.