Sunday, November 16, 2008

Is it real or bluff stuff?

The G-20 Statement of November 15, 2008 says “Regulators must ensure that their actions support market discipline, avoid potentially adverse impacts on other countries, including regulatory arbitrage…”

What more discipline could they want than having imposed on the markets as a Governess Fraulein Credit Rating Agencies and that later turned out to be so crazy as to send them of to the subprime swamplands? Do they really believe that finding a better qualified Mary Poppins, or a Maria will do it? Scary! Why don’t they leave the banks alone so that they learn to depend on themselves instead of following as a herd any agency that no matter how good it gets, is bound to take them, and us, sooner or later, over a cliff?

“Adverse impacts on other countries”? Like when the supposed global good of a credit rating agency turned into a global bad and caused a German bank that had never awarded a mortgage in Germany to be the first casualty of this subprime mortgage having followed the AAA signs looking for high risk-weighted returns in California?

“including regulatory arbitrage? Are we now finally get rid of the current “minimum capital requirements for banks” that has created such a damaging and useless regulatory arbitrage on risk…whatever that is?

The G-20, do they mean what they say, do they know what they say, or are they just bluffing?