February 06, 2013

But, if dropping money on the real economy, don’t let Lord Turner or any of his regulatory colleagues pilot the helicopter

Sir I refer to your “Helicopter lessons” February 6, where you analyze some favorable comments made by Adair Turner on “helicopter money”, meaning “putting newly minted cash irreversibly into the economy". In it you write giving “cash to the private sector rather than to the public treasury [has] the advantage it keeps intact market discipline on budgetary choices”.

You are absolutely right. But in the same vein let me also remind you that if you drop money on the economy by helicopter, make really sure this one is not piloted by Lord Turner, or any other of his bank regulating chums. I say this because these are those who have seen it as their mission in life to make certain that banks only lend to “The Infallible” and not to “The Risky”

And when doing so, they seem to never care about the fact that bank exposures to “The Risky” have never been large enough to create a major bank crisis, only excessive exposure to “The Infallible” do that; and neither do they want to listen to that “The Risky” include many who make a living on the margins of the real economy, and who extremely important for making it moving forward, so that this one does not stall and fall, and bring all of us down, including the banks.

The regulatory distortion produced by these runaway regulators, is directly responsible for that our banks can no longer perform an efficient allocation of economic resources.