‘Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.’
Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman (1987-2006)
(Batra, R, 2005)
Introduction
In 300 B.C, a Greek sea merchant named Hegestratos engineered one of the earliest recorded cases of fraud when he ‘took out an insurance on a boat for a large sum’. At the moment when Hegestratos took this antique insurance policy, also know as bottomry, he already had the intention of sinking his own boat halfway through his next trip. His goal was to collect the insurance money. He
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The buyers are exposed to many risks. Indeed, the finance sector is highly dependent on information and how this information is shared in the market. The quality of a financial product is often identified a long time after the original transaction. Regulation is indispensable in order to protect the consumers from misinformation or fraud. There are many different agents operating in a same market, such as institutions or individuals, with very different levels of expertise. One of the roles of financial regulators is to ensure that the most vulnerable are not being wronged. That is why the regulatory system is carrying out tasks to prohibit the sale of certain financial products and specifying where they can be sold. (Goodhart, C, 2013)
The reality of systemic risk made the task of regulating the financial system increasingly complicated, as the crises aren’t contained in one country or market. The extreme inter-dependence between the different agents is the main reason why we need regulation today, as some misconducts can cause a domino effect, affecting markets globally. The structure of the banking system in itself explains this process. In the finance industry, banks borrow money from other banks. If one bank fails, the one who lent the funds in the first place might also follow the same path, creating panic in the markets. The government’s first prerogative is to protect its citizens from these
History has shown us again, and again that when power is left unchecked it becomes corrupt and out of control, that is the iron law of oligarchy. In the US we saw this happen recently in the 2008 economic meltdown. The banks and corporations should never have been aloud to become "to big to fail," and once they did grow to a point when they were there should have been more government oversight to make sure things did not get out of hand. After the great depression laws were put in place to try to prevent something like that from ever happening again, but we undid those restrictions and ended up in a place eerily similar to somewhere we had been before. In this paper I will cover a brief history of the great depression, and show how the situation in 2008 was all too similar. I will also discuss and analyze the factors that brought us to the tipping point in our most recent economic scare. And finally I will explain why the actions taken by the FED were necessary and kept us from an even more
The Dodd-Frank Act put a considerable burden on financial regulators whom have to work out the details in order to implement its vision. It includes a variety of points relating to the prevention of a future crisis (Kim & Muldoon 2015). Some of these major points include: (1) The creation of a new Financial Stability Oversight Council, comprising existing regulators, to be responsible for overseeing any financial institution or set of market circumstances determined to be likely to result in risk to the overall economy, (2) A reallocation of banking oversight responsibility among the Federal Reserve System, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the FDIC, requiring the Federal Reserve Board to supervise nonbank financial companies “that may
From a macroeconomic perspective, banks and other financial institutions are of critical importance. Not only do they make loans to homeowners and businesses, but these institutions make loans to each other and also influence the money supply. With this in mind, the government as well as the general population have a great interest in insuring the stability of these institutions. So, in our case, when banks are seriously threatened with collapse, even through fault of their own, the state has an ethical duty to ensure their survival through any means necessary. This is a consequence of the deep connections these institutions have with all facets of our society. One clear ramification would be decreased access to loans, if a bank is failing, it will be more hesitant or even cease to make loans to homeowners and small businesses. What is more devastating is the effect this will have on our
Firstly, the Dodd–Frank Act pushes forward the reformation of America's financial regulatory system. Several new regulatory authorities are set up to enhance the government supervision and administration of the industry. The Financial Stability Oversight Council is established to identify material risks to financial stability, with the support from Office of Financial Research. Moreover, Fed is entitled to exercise additional superintendence beyond banks.
There are three challenges to regulating systematic risk: 1) Identifying and measuring the systemic risk of financial firms 2) Developing, based on systemic risk measures, an optimal policy whose
The 2008 financial crisis should not be the last one readers will experience, but this paper would like to present a picture of how it unfolded and where went wrong, so that hopefully we can learn from it. This paper will address some post-crisis regulations and why regulators responded this way. It concludes that the key is to carry out reforms addressing the moral hazard issue deeply in our current financial system.
The impact of the financial crisis in 2008 is so far , it has resulted in various industries have revived a shock, even many large companies have been forced into bankruptcy.Inflation is a result of the decline in the quality of life, the weakening of people 's ability to pay. The outbreak of the financial crisis from the United States and then spread to the world,so this essay analyzes the reason of the US financial crisis, it is equally applicable to the countries in the world and take warning,that is the lack of supervision of financial institutions in the United States.
On the other hand, Simon Malik’s article “National Corruption Breeds Personal Dishonesty”, talk about how people in poor and corrupt countries will cheat more than rich
Government officials who participated in efforts to mitigate its effects claim that their actions prevented a complete meltdown of the world’s financial system, an idea that has found many adherents among academic and other commentators. We will never know, of course, what would have happened if these emergency actions had not been taken, but it is possible to gain an understanding of why they were considered necessary-that is, the likely causes of the crisis. The history of events leading up to the crisis forms a coherent story, but one that is quite different from the narrative underlying the Dodd-Frank
Failure in reforming and adopting proper government policies have caused the world economy to face severe financial crises over a long period of time. The problems started to arise in the more recent period and they were not repaired by the regulatory responses. In retrospect, some of these regulatory failures then were responsible for the crisis today, likewise the poor regulatory practices today might be responsible for the crises
The financial crisis of 2008 turned the world upside down. It is said to be the worst financial situation for the United States since the Great Depression in the 1930’s. Millions of people all over the country lost their jobs, retirement funds, and even houses. After all this chaos and distress, the United States government still bailed out the banks that were supposedly ‘too big to fail’. There were many things that attributed to the big banks going under. Some of the factors that caused these banks to crash were high risk transactions, a very complex financial market, and even the lack of regulation throughout the industry (DeGrace). Although these played a large role in the
However, Bernanke admonished investors by the book that even though banking regulation and supervision protect investors as always, if some particular events or financial crisis happened, like housing bubble and mortgage markets crisis, either or both of these two system work. The example in the book is booming house prices in 2000s. After the sharply increasing of housing prices, risky mortgage lending likes subprime lending trouble began surfacing in 2006 and 2007. The risky mortgage comes with more demand for housing, which will again push the housing prices higher and higher, reinforcing a vicious cycle. As a result, because of the nominate housing price is much higher than the real price, the careful lenders who have good credit step out the market, the rest of borrowers are subprime lenders, “some borrowers were defaulting on loan after making only a few, or even no, payments.” (318) In the book, Bernanke conceded that Fed responded the trouble slowly and cautiously. When Board in Washington determined to make supervision of bank more centralized, he still overconfidently believe that Reserve Bank staff were better informed about condition in their districts. Another Bernanke’s conceit is that the financial regulatory system was not as stable and comprehensive as he thought before the financial crisis. In
Moreover, regarding corruption as an innate quality of human culture undermines the hope for any improvement and is inherently fatalistic, serving as an excuse for creating cultures of corruption” (source: iDebate.org)
In this essay I will be addressing the “Too Big To Fail” (TBTF) problem in the current banking system. I will be discussing the risks associated with this policy, and the real problems behind it. I will then examine some solutions that have been proposed to solve the “too big to fail” problem. The policy ‘too big to fail’ refers to the idea that a bank has become so large that its failure could cause a disastrous effect to the rest of the economy, and so the government will provide assistance, in the form of perhaps a bailout/oversee a merger, to prevent this from happening. This is to protect the creditors and allow the bank to continue operating. If a bank does fail then this could cause a domino effect throughout
The purpose of this paper is to show that the “regulatory capture” has played a role not easily measurable in causing the global financial crisis. To illustrate this, the first step will to describe the “regulatory capture” in its three possible qualifications; then, I will explain, providing some examples, how each of these categories played a possible role in posing the basis for the financial crisis. While illustrating the different forms of capture I will present some questions that leave space to different answers. Finally, I will conclude that the regulatory capture have surely played a role in generating the crisis, but it is not possible to evaluate the effective role it had in causing it.