Are the big banks winning?
The Dodd-Frank Act to re-regulate the big banks was intentionally tough. It was passed in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crash to end cowboy banking; require far more capital and much less leverage, and rein in the trading-desk geniuses who pumped up serial bubbles. Since Congress is a poor forum for crafting such a complex statute, the details were left to the expert regulatory agencies.
The big banks pay lip-service to the goals of Dodd-Frank — but they’re mounting bitter, rearguard actions in federal courts to block meaningful constraints and regulations on procedural and other grounds. This is an ominous turn of events, since these banks have the legal firepower to overwhelm budget-constrained U.S. regulatory agencies.
While Dodd-Frank is aimed at preventing another cycle of bubble-and-bust, shrinking the financial sector is crucial for other reasons. One is a mass of evidence demonstrating that hyper-financialized economies have lower growth. Another is the appalling ethical record of large financial companies. The chance of making huge paydays by risking other people’s money, it seems, can sometimes derange moral compasses.
First, the pro-growth argument for clamping down on the banks: Once the financial sector achieves a certain size, its continued expansion reduces economic growth, according to a new study by two senior economists at the Bank for International Settlements, Stephen Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubi, using a large international data base stretching back more than 30 years.
Their conclusions are unambiguous. No country can achieve a high rate of growth without a well-functioning financial system. China, for example, lacks a deep system of consumer finance, forcing it into a lop-sided development strategy. The result is the creation of dangerous imbalances that could threaten continued rapid growth.
from The Great Debate UK:
The economy: reasons to be miserable
- Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Is the crisis over yet?
In the last 3 months, the Dow and the FTSE have each risen by about 25 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 by a third. House prices appear to be stabilising in the UK. Stress-tested and backed by seemingly unlimited government funding, the banks are lending again (if only to each other), so that 1-month libor is down to only 0.3 percent.
