30 May 2014

The Ballad of Casey Jones

Casey Jones was an engineer. A real, live train engineer, not a financial engineer. But, as they did, he crashed and burned. What seems to be the original:
'Twas around this curve he saw a passenger train;
Something happened in Casey's brain;
Fireman jumped off, but Casey stayed on,
He's a good engineer but he's dead and gone--

Too bad some banksters (who couldn't be called 'good') didn't stay on the train they sent 'round the bend. As many, including humble self, have pointed out, the purpose of the financial sector is to marry borrowers with savers, at minimum cost, and not to suck up the savings for themselves. Today we get some reporting from London. Mr. Norris devotes much of his article to the recent history of bank regulation, and lack thereof.
Ms. Lagarde added that "the true role of the financial sector is to serve, not to rule, the economy. Its real job is to benefit people, especially by financing investment and thus helping with the creation of jobs and growth."

Ms. Lagarde, of course, is now managing director of the IMF. It's been the IMF over the last few decades which has had a knee-jerk reaction to countries getting into trouble, which reaction is to punish the poor and reward the rich. The IMF did, quietly, admit it went a bit overboard. Words are nice, but actions are better. IOW, the jury is still out.

This is the end of Mr. Norris' piece:
Mr. Carney, by the way, is a Canadian who got the Bank of England job in part because of a perception that British regulators had been too trusting. The Edelman survey found that only 6 percent of people in Britain thought there was now too much regulation of financial services firms, while 64 percent thought there was too little.

High time the London Whales and other self-serving quants, banksters, hedgies, etc. were called to account.

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