"One of the features that distinguishes American financial life from American street life is how long it takes the police to turn up after a crime has been committed.
Most of the financial scandal now making its debut in the business press refers to activity that dates back years. Most of the bad things that companies are accused of doing they were doing right through the boom -- when, of course, the SEC had little to say about any of it.
Cost of Bad Timing
Back when it was actually going on, for instance, the Enron book-rigging was helped along by the SEC, which exempted the company from financial disclosure requirements for utilities. Only now, well after the evil deeds are done and the villains are gone, do the money cops rush in, sirens wailing.
This pattern in the financial markets -- boom followed by bust followed by police action -- is now so common that no one thinks twice about it. But I can think of several reasons why we should.
The first is that bad timing renders financial regulation superfluous. The money cops are more energized than they have been in many years, but their efforts are less necessary than they have been in many years.
Self-Policing Markets
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Baldur, if you want to see corruption in Self-Policing markets in the Bush administration, you can look
at Interior's Gale Norton and HER PAST. It was under her tenure that a company polluted something
like 17 miles of a river in Colorado, I believe. Her idea of an environmental get together for Republicans
was to invite the CEO's and others from the polluting industries: coal, oil, chemicals etc.
Last I heard she was on trial for lying to a judge. I haven't heard how it turned out. |
