The near collapse of the US financial system elicited a variety of reactions. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, a Social Democrat in the coalition, predicted that "the US will lose its super power status in the world financial system". French President Nicholas Sarkozy wasn't far behind; he called the free enterprise system "crazy". US presidential hopeful John McCain called it corrupt (beyond repair?).
If the 'bail-out' plan is rejected gain by the US legislature, the crisis could prove more daunting then the 'great depression', and punitive for the world that went on investing in US markets despite the many crises this market faced in the last four decades. In this backdrop, central banks' sustained practice of converting their reserves in to the US Dollar (prodding the US policy-makers to go on erring) is indeed baffling.
On their part, Fed Governors did not warn successive US regimes that the quest for making America the sole super power was shifting their focus away from the economy. That the trade deficit was rising every year and America was getting used to living on credit. That is had become the normal life style of most Americans. That credit availability was dangerously excessive, thanks to the faulty risk covers.
Partial regulation left investment banking and financial derivatives out of its ambit; it caused five cyclical crises, and the one now is rooted in credit default swaps. Although these cycles progressively became shorter, they did not trigger a revamp of the US regulatory system because world's central banks continued to invest in US debt that plugged the liquidity gaps created by colossal losses of the US corporate sector. One shocking measure of how weak regulation has been is an estimate of the outstanding credit default swaps - US $20 trillion - in the US alone. The amount is thrice the size of America's GDP.
This madness went on because this market was regulated. The mind boggling speculation in oil markets too owed itself to virtually no regulation; banning short-selling to curb it was a pedestrian, not professional response.
By their continued funding of the expanding US fiscal and trade deficits world's central banks put America virtually to sleep by deluding it into believing that its economy was healthy when it wasn't. The mounting trade deficit, and the unending external borrowing to fund it, pronounced it boldly. Yet, except the 1994 Clinton administration, no one acknowledged it.
Now the US faces a massive gap - $700 billion - inclusive of losses that wiped out a lot of global wealth placed in the US financial system. It leaves the Fed no option but to 'nationalise' (a rarity in central banking history) the financial institutions going bust. Many central banks now worry about the banks they oversee, and their accountability for investing the national wealth in poorly regulated US market.
Some of them may not be too worried because political regimes in their countries have, at best, sketchy grasp over macroeconomics and only make-believe capability for holding central bankers accountable. But such central bankers can relax only for a while; eventually they would be in trouble as the side effects of the US recession seep into and weaken their economies.
For central bankers, the first globally recognised warning about things going wrong was the Basle Accord-I implemented in the late-1980s; it warned about de-regulation being dangerous in an environment of speculation-driven volatility. But, as we know, it failed to shake the central banks and the Bank for International Settlements had to issue a stiffer version of that regime - Basle Accord-II.
The long, and at times confusing risk management guidelines this accord stipulates, lead the reader to just one conclusion - neutralising the effects of market volatility (the vociferously defended feature of the free enterprise system) through risk hedging systems and instruments is a myth; just keep increasing the capital to enhance loss of your bearing capacity. Don't ask for curbing volatility because that is an unforgivable sin.
Central banks did not contain the 'free' part of the enterprise system within limits that disallow some market players to benefit unduly at the expense of others. Ensuring balance - the eternal measure of governance quality was sidelined; this allowed some market players to build a clout for distorting the markets beyond repair, and becoming wholly unmanageable when these giants failed.
Giant US financial institutions have now perpetrated a catastrophe that the US can't fix without admitting the lethal effects of excessive financial deregulation and the need for going back to the basics. Leaders from France to China (recent converts to the free enterprise philosophy) and Japan now see what a combination of excessive freedom, poor regulation, and scanty oversight of mega institutions leads to.
In recent years, the dotcom and then the Enron tragedies were warnings about things going wrong but they weren't heeded by Alan Greenspan who headed the Fed during the last two of the four successive decadent decades. His guilty-conscious article 'The Fed is blameless on the property bubble', published in the NY Times was, in fact, admission of regulatory failures about which he was warned as early as 1994.
In most developing countries, vital support services for the financial services sector remain unregulated, which keeps the investing and lending risk high, because bankers can't manage it. Yet, central banks don't press their parliaments to regulate these services. Given this backdrop, it is time for a revamp of the entire regulatory philosophy to make it sufficiently intrusive, though neither unrealistic nor dictatorial.
In particular, this regulatory stance should apply to the credit rating agencies that pass a verdict on risks associated with an enterprise. A federal agency must assess the availability of requisite capacity in these agencies to calibrate the health of any and every enterprise. If an asset or an enterprise suffers badly after being rated highly, the rating process must be investigated and the agency punished judiciously.
Fearing possible regulation, these agencies are now claiming that risk ratings are based on the past record of enterprises, and shouldn't be taken as indicators of their future risk profile. Was this also the understanding of the central banks? If so, why then does the Basle Accord religiously prescribe risk ratings for measuring future risks associated with borrowers?
Central banks must also worry about outsourcing of loan marketing. This practice led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis because US laws didn't provide, firstly, for risk marketers to have a minimum professional qualification, secondly, their being employees of the mortgage companies and, finally, that their compensation must not be tied to the value of the mortgages they solicit. All this amounted to criminal regulatory neglect.
Credible implementation of a revamped regulatory philosophy can restore shaken saver confidence and revive the credit markets. Placing all the eggs in one basket - the US Dollar whose bottom was falling apart, was dumb. Risk must be diversified, given the strength of the Euro, Yen and Yuan. Investment banking and derivatives markets must not be treated as aliens; they need intrusive regulation, in fact, a lot of it.
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