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slightly_optimistic 05/04/2010 05:07 PM Report
"we’re working on all fronts at the moment -- derivatives, supervision, capital requirement, compensation standards. All fronts are opened for proper rules to be applied."
The EUobserver notes that the French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, added to the debate on credit rating agencies on Monday, saying there should be more supervision of the current agencies to ensure their full independence.
This echoes the call from an EU Commissioner for independence in the audit process. But there will surely be national resistance to such an important safeguard. See comment on 'Analysis on the Goldman Sachs Senate hearings' [05/01/2010 11:51 AM]
esantoro 04/27/2010 11:13 PM Report
I was going to refrain from posting, because I wasn't sure if I could comment without sounding pissy. The following interview with McEwan on, among other things, the task of the novelist, prompts me to plow ahead.
When we talk about the financial crisis, we stay on the surface. It's great that France and other countries feel a deep sense of responsibility to their communities and thus have safe regulation well in place. Why doesn't the United States? What is the cultural impetus that has eroded that responsibility over the last 40 years? I don't want to hear anymore about how people on Wall Street are very smart and will always find ways to work the system. They are no smarter than the average three-year-old who will find a way to get what he can't or shouldn't have. When he gets caught and punished enough times, he'll put his desire in check until a future date when the risk seems tenable once again. Benefiting by rigging the rules of the game does not require great intelligence. It requires only a sequence of very simple measures, i.e., remove the cop from the corner and do whatever the hell you want. And this happens when true intelligence is lacking. The rest of us have been duped into playing by the rules. What kind of a society would we have (maybe we already have it) if we taught citizens in primary, secondary, and tertiary education to play by the rules of Wall Street of the last 40 years? Maybe that's exactly what we should be teaching students: how to work the system. I guarantee you more kids will graduate. Ah, but there's the rub: This is all the more reason for charter schools and the push toward privatizing education, eliminating the risk of education as a potentially subversive activity. You've got to keep the proles docile, especially in an age of technology when access to information has never been easier.
I want to see the novelists and other artists come in and hold a mirror up to this contemporary culture so we can see who we are. I want a Melville to show us how this pathological ship of state keeps creaking on.
If we have had a bubble economy for the past four decades, how on Earth are we going to revive the economy, especially now that many more people are watching and scrutinizing the next claim of economic soundness? We Americans have not been honest with ourselves for the past 40 years. Perhaps we've never really been honest with ourselves, but the past 40 years deserves special attention.
If we ever have this discussion, we will not escape it without getting dirty in issues of race and class, really dirty. But we always seem to manage skirting deep discussion of the real underlying issues. So, we creak on.
REMant 04/27/2010 11:01 AM Report
Speculators seem always to have won in these situations, because they seem always to have been right about the figures. It is not a matter of attacks, defenses and confidence. That's more Keynesian claptrap, and completely at odds with what you said about trade. Facts are facts. Prove they are different and they'll back off, otherwise you'll be playing into their hands just as the Fed played into the hands of the big banks here.