- General post (802)
- April 3, 2008: Armchair Economist gets a much-needed update
- April 3, 2008: Ghost of Herbert Hoover
- April 3, 2008: Are you smarter than a high-schooler?
- April 3, 2008: Katrina hero: Wal-Mart
- April 2, 2008: No Child Left Behind
- April 2, 2008: The poverty hype
- April 2, 2008: Oil profits
- April 2, 2008: Don's response
- April 2, 2008: Oil refinements
- April 1, 2008: My profile
Regulatory overkill
From today’s WSJ:
The claim that deregulation went too far is coming from many sides. We need more regulation, the argument goes, and even a single regulator to bring stability. Former SEC chairman, Arthur Levitt, Jr., made some of that case on this page. House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank has prepared legislation, and others are rushing forward with their own plans.
Their diagnosis is wrong. Mistaken regulation contributed greatly to the current problems in financial markets. Take the 1970s Basel agreement between developed country governments, which followed bank failures in Germany and the U.S. The idea was to have equivalent risk standards in all the principal lending countries. The agreement required banks to increase their capital if they increased mortgage loans and other risky assets.