Quelle Surprise! Bankers Claim Regulating Them Will Be Bad for Us

You have to hand it to those bankers. They are very creative in finding ways to argue that life for them should continue more or less as it did before, despite the spectacular damage that they have exacted on the global economy.

Had the industry put together a reform program, or even fessed up to the damage they hath wrought? Heavens no, it’s clear that if they huff and puff enough, they can block any serious measures. That does not mean that absolutely nothing will happen, mind you. The industry may have to submit to some indignities so that the politicians can say they have collected a few scalps, but these changes are certain to be in areas that have high PR value but will not inconvenience the bankers overmuch.

In fact, the banksters are better situated than they were before. Now they enjoy explicit state support, a huge web of safety nets, and super low interest rates with virtually no strings attached. The onus is on the officialdom to claw back from this industry-favoring position. Even if the financiers have to concede a little ground, they seem if anything to have benefitted from this wreck-the-global-economy exercise. No reason not to do it again.

An egregious argument for doing little to nothing comes from Josef Ackermann, chairman of Deutsche Bank via the Financial Times:

>>>>>>>
A deluge of financial regulations threatens to harm economic growth, one of the world’s top bankers said on Friday, in what appeared to be the start of a concerted fightback by the industry against feared regulatory overkill.

Josef Ackermann, chairman of the Institute of International Finance, the global bankers’ association, and head of Deutsche Bank, said governments were not paying enough attention to the aggregate impact of the reforms being proposed.

“There is a trade-off between maximising stability of banks and optimising growth of the real economy. That balance not be forgotten,” Mr Ackermann told the Financial Times. He warned that the entire economy would “pay a high price” if regulation went too far.
>>>>>>>>

Is there an iota of proof for this assertion? We are suffering from a financial sector that has become preoccupied with serving its own interests as opposed to providing services essential to modern economies. At least in the US and UK, banks take a larger chunk of GDP than they did in the early 1980s, and that result probably holds across advanced economies.

Continued>>>

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/quelle-surprise-bankers-claim-regulating-them-will-be-bad-for-us.html

Wait till you get a look at how these mobsters fight.

...without regulation.

They have actually gotten more involved in a lot of the activities that crashed the global economy the first time. They made a profit off it last time so why would they stop.

President Obama made a huge mistake when re-regulating them wasn't priority one.

I wonder what will happen when they have to ask for a second bailout.

All we are to them is potential dead peasants.

has begun to wreak its dreadful damage, they still do not come down on the hustlers of the financial sector like a ton of bricks, when they maunder and spout that line about the nation needing a strong financial sector more than anything else, in order for the nation to thrive.

Alex Brummer, the City Editor of the Daily Mail (of all papers) pointed out how they had pressured the successive neo-conservative governments to keep the value of the pound high (at the inevitable expense of manufacturing industry), for their own self-serving purposes. I don’t think one needs to be a rocket-scientist in order to entertain the gravest doubts as to the pre-eminent role in their reasoning, played by the spirit of patriotism they claim.

Indeed, as a result of this one-eyed, self-serving perspective, the wealth of the nation has ultimately been destroyed - or is on track for such a fate, via a polarisation of the wealth to feed their fathomless avarice. It is just the last throw of the dice by the moral underclass brilliantly characterised by some of the more searing insights of the genius, the late J K Galbraith, the arch-enemy of the neo-liberalism conceived and promoted by surely one of the most crooked of half-wits, Milton Friedman:

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

This one just seems such timely advice:

“In all life, one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”

now it means finanical 'products' that benefit a few. Dear Mr Bankster, your threats are very hollow is some ways. You mistakenly assume that we want all the crap you are saying will be threatened if you're regulated. I'd rather have you regulated.