Libération
Monday 28 January 2008
The name that fits those who have presided over the deregulation of global finance is now clear: Frankenstein.
The monster they've created has escaped all control. Its latest misdeeds are well-known: the "subprime" crisis, born of products so elusive that bankers themselves have lost their trail; and now this world record of bank disasters, the loss recorded last week by Société Générale. Jérôme Kerviel, a miniscule cog in the global machine, and Daniel Bouton, the bank's CEO, although one of the best-paid people in France and on top of that given to instructing the whole world, are no more in this affair than feeble scapegoats for a system gone mad.
Certainly, the fluidity of global finance allows a better allocation of capital on a planetary scale. Certainly, speculation, by reducing the risks of some agents so they can be borne by others, has its utility in a market economy. But the abolition of any guardrails to speculative imagination has created a gigantic mass of unstable money above the real economy, the jolts of which jostle governments, industries and citizens in their turn. A little bit of hindsight teaches us that in the supposedly archaic era of financial regulation, global growth was not lower than it is today. It's time for politicians, whose responsibility it is, to have a go at taking back control of the monster. They have the means. As long as they throw out the laissez-faire dogmas that paralyze them now.
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment