Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Are we really focussing on the root causes of current economic crisis?

“The dispersion of credit risk by banks to a broader and more diverse set of investors ... has helped to make the banking and overall financial system more resilient ... improved resilience may be seen in fewer bank failures.”
IMF annual report 2006

Maybe we should take a time out from castigating these awful bankers who created this shadow system for their own interests and really try to understand what is going on. Policy makers including central banks encouraged this system. But what are they really trying to do now? Dismantle it? Probably not since they did not really understand how it was created in the first place? Regulate it? There are clear signs of this but not clear exactly what the effect of this will be. Finance it? This is what central banks are doing. They are standing in for the securitisation markets but they cannot do this forever. Either we find a way to return and manage securitisation or captital will be seriously rationed.