Finantskriisist: reguleerimine enne ja pärast
Larry Ribstein ja Henry Butler juhivad Forbes’is tähelepanu tõsiasjale, et eelmise finantsskandaali järel kehtestatud regulatsioonide pakett Sarbanes-Oxley oli tagantjärgi tarkus, mille arvestatavad kulud pole ennast tegelikult õigustanud. Mehed pakuvad välja ka lihtsa ja igati mõistliku lahenduse:
The crisis shows that SOX did not have the advertised payoff of flushing Enronesque risk out of the market. Firms now collapsing from risks hidden in their walls and foundations were subject to SOX. What, exactly, did SOX accomplish other than imposing huge costs and giving us a false sense of security for six years?
Despite these failings, Congress does not necessarily have to scrap SOX. We suggest a way to make it work. SOX would remain, but firms could have their shareholders vote to opt out of some or all of its provisions. Or firms going public could opt out of SOX and let potential investors decide whether to buy their shares.
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Reguleerimisest kirjutades pole võimalik hoiduda Madoffi mustkunstist (50 miljardit dollarit on ja voila – enam ei ole!), millega seoses juhtis Megan McArdle tähelepanu ühele huvitavale seigale, millega peaks iga vähegi täiendavat reguleerimist pooldav inimene arvestama:
Madoff’s activities were not the sort of gray-area thing that might be slipped in among a newly lax attitude towards SPEs and SIVs. It’s straight out old fashioned fraud, of the sort that no one, no matter how keen they are on deregulation, thought was okay. The SEC did not give a pass to Madoff because Bush, or anyone else, had told them to go easier on Ponzi schemes.
Somehow, even though everyone agreed that this was the sort of thing the SEC should be aggressively rooting out, and the SEC has perfectly adequate resources to investigate high-profile fraud at a 20-person operation, the SEC dropped the ball so hard it’s probably even now still falling through the Earth’s mantle towards China.
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Veronique de Rugy juhib Reason’i lehekülgedel tähelepanu sellele, et dereguleerimine jäi G.W. Bushi valitsemise ajal peamiselt retoorikaks, mis varjas tuhandete uute regulatsioonide loomist, millest mitmed avaldavad ka arvestatavat majandusliku mõju. Järgnevas väljavõttes on ära toodud vaid mõned nendest masendavalt suurtest numbritest, millest mitmed on ka võrdlevatesse graafikutesse pigistatud:
Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations’ cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are “economically significant,” meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That’s a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses.
Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.
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Virginia Postrel selgitab The Atlanticu lehekülgedel, miks “mullide” tekkimine on paljuski vältimatu osa inimloomusest, mis isegi adekvaatse ja loogika abil tuletatud informatsiooni olemas olu korral eelistab vahetut kogemust. Virginia teeb huvitavaid järeldusi, kuid jõuab nendeni kasutades turgude dünaamika selgitamiseks eksperimentaalökonoomika tulemusi viimastelt aastakümnetelt:
Again and again, in experiment after experiment, the trading price runs up way above fundamental value. Then, as the 15th round nears, it crashes. The problem doesn’t seem to be that participants are bored and fooling around. The difference between a good trading performance and a bad one is about $80 for a three-hour session, enough to motivate cash-strapped students to do their best. Besides, Noussair emphasizes, “you don’t just get random noise. You get bubbles and crashes.” Ninety percent of the time.
These lab results should give pause not only to people who believe in efficient markets, but also to those who think we can banish bubbles simply by curbing corruption and imposing more regulation. Asset markets, it seems, suffer from irrepressible effervescence. Bubbles happen, even in the most controlled conditions.
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Robert Waldman soovitab liberaalsema maailmavaatega inimestel otsida praeguse finantskriisi allikaid mitte Fannie ja Freddie juurest vaid hoopis Basel II rägastikust, mis muu hulgas soovitas regulatiivsetele organisatsioonidel enda nõudmistes hakata kasutama reitinguagentuuride reitinguid seeläbi õõnestades nende informatiivset väärtust:
When policy makers assume that an empirical relationship is a natural law and attempt to exploit it, it disappears. In particular the usefulness to private agents of the ratings caused regulators to decide to use them too (and destroy them) via Basel II.
Regulations change things. Now ratings such as AAA are no longer mere communicative acts whose value depends entirely on whether investors believe the. Now those three letters appear in a proposed regulatory framework. A bank that doesn’t believe an instrument is worthy of an AAA rating can still choose to hold that instrument in order to keep its requried capital low. Any instrument that clears the AAA bar with room to spare has wasted safeness which is not being used leveraging up as much as possible.
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