XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Friday 10 July 2009

Today's Foundation, Tomorrow's Crisis

Reading: The Geithner-Summers Proposal: Today's Foundation, Tomorrow's Crisis http://seekingalpha.com/a/32jl

Tim Geithner and Larry Summers outline a five-point plan for dealing with the underlying problems in our financial system, entitled A New Financial Foundation.

The authors are not completely clear on what they think caused the current crisis, but you can back out some points from their reasoning – and the implicit view seems quite at odds with reality.

  1. Their view: Regulation is overly focused on safety and soundness of individual banks. Reality: There was a complete failure of safety and soundness supervision. This must be fundamental to any financial system – without this, you’ll get mush every time.

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