WHO CALLED JOHN MACK, TODAY
I'd give anything to know how many members of the G.O.P. Priesthood called John Mack to "counsel" him regarding his thoughtful observation, yesterday, that a global supervisor would make sense for a global, capital markets mega-firm, like his own, Morgan Stanley?
No matter how obvious that need is, given this month's market developments, no matter how much a public good would be served by cross-border supervision (of derivatives and highly-leveraged financial entities), it flies into the competitive-deregulation-is-the-best mantra of those who would use the weakest link in the chain to ... drag everyone into a hands-off regulatory posture.
Smart regulation, leading to transparency and orderly markets, has to be better than what the G.O.P.'s President offered this morning: saving "free markets" by periodically risking taxpayer money or making public choices about which companies to "save".
Friday, October 17, 2008
Elusive Fact of the Day
