‘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
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
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.
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
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 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.
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
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
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
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
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)
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.
Before the advent of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 1933 and the general conception of government safety nets, the United States banking industry was quite different than it is today. Depositors assumed substantial default risk and even the slightest changes in consumer confidence could result in complete turmoil within the banking world. In addition, bank managers had almost complete discretion over operations. However, today the financial system is among the most heavily government- regulated sectors of the U.S. economy. This drastic change in public policy resulted directly from the industry’s numerous pre-regulatory failures and major disruptions that produced severe economic and social
Corruption is one of the major problems of the globalized world and the effects of it are devastating. Instead of the globalization of the economy having been able to find ways to crack down the corruption, the effects have been the opposite, and it is growing unstoppable. Corruption can ruin countries, distort the market, democracy and human rights, and limit investments, for example, and the only solution to this big problem seems to rely on the ethical and legal instruments of the businesses.
Financial Crises are well-known phenomena in economics history; however, after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 the role that Central Banks play in order to prevent Financial Crises has been questioned. To begin with, it is important to understand that crises consist of highly complex macro-financial linkages that reflect the interactions between the financial sector and the real economy (Claessens 2012). Additionally, it is important to highlight two different financial crises groups: Currency and sudden stop crisis, which have strictly quantitative definitions; and debt and banking crises that depend on qualitative and judgmental analysis (Claessens 2012). Nevertheless, the interconnectivity of the financial sector demonstrates that major crises are a blend of the different types; thus, the effects on real economy are larger (Laevene 2008). In consequence, governments and central banks have the responsibility to develop monetary and macro-prudential policies to appropriately supervise and regulate the financial industry (Norgren 2010). However, central banks have failed to appropriately understand the main symptoms that precede financial crises: credit booms and asset booms (Bijapur 2015). In fact, it is essential to comprehend these symptoms in order to develop policies that strengthen the fragility of the financial industry; hence, upholding stable growth and inflation.
Corruption is the misuse of public resources and office for private gain. However, this definition does not exclude the misuse of resources in corporate and private corporations. Generally, corruption is perceived to be more widespread in certain countries than others. In particular, the evil of corruption is widely practiced in developing countries. The most important consideration is to understand why this is the usual trend in corruption across the globe. In a general perspective, different theories have tried to associate this trend in corruption with specific cultural and historical traditions, political institutions, levels of economic development, as well as government policies. However, there is more to consider in this argument since corruption is also prominent in countries with histories of British rule, protestant traditions, and less economic development.