Monday 12 September 2011

The layman's solution - Part 2 Regulation


This is my Simple Layman's hArd-line, Common-sense [SLAC] three-tiered solution to our current malaise. Each tier revisits perception; planning & implementation. Let's leave the economics, which is nonscience, to the economists and the politics to the cleverly-polished..

JPMorgan's Dimon has labeled BASEL III as unduly restrictive, particularly for US banks which in his words is 'anti-american', whatever that means. Amusingly, this is the same individual who called for an international set of regulatory rules post the financial crisis. BASEL III purports exactly that ie: an international set of regulatory rules applicable to ALL banks, eastern banks included. For interest, a cynic might illustrate the need for more transparent regulation citing, in illustration, Dimon's chameleon-like propensity to camouflage self-interest with the well-being of society at large. 

However which way you slice it, the financial services industry needs effective, rather than restrictive, regulation. Conversely, retaliatory bank-bashing is equally ridiculous. The markets face the prospect of unrelenting, uncapped civil claim against US banks by delinquent US mortgage-holders wronged or otherwise in unlawful lending practice. This sword of Damocles hanging over the banking industry will, no doubt, have a profoundly negative impact on US banks in the future already evidenced in the mooted retrenchment of thousands of employees. In an already stressed jobs-market there are no winners here...

SLAC proposes:
  1. Intangibly difficult to quantify or legislate against selectively, US authorities must limit civil suits against the banking industry arising out of the housing-market collapse. If they don't the destabilizing effect on the US banking system and the commensurate industry contagion worldwide will limit any chance of economic recovery. As a concession to dispel capital adequacy fatigue, if you like, level the regulatory playing field across the global sphere and expel, immediately, any bank from international financial markets for material breach.
  2. Make regulatory authorities jointly responsible for financial loss arising out of a material breach of regulatory stipulations. 

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