25 Responses to “Pour l’Inde, la farce a assez duré”

1. matvail2002 dit :

   8 février 2010 à 10 h 12 min

   J’ai trouvé une bonne caricature sur le sujet.
   http://mediamanager.oc3.generationflash.com/client_utils/_resize_picture_portal.php?member=cp&w=581&h=392&img=051_7662_001.jpg

2. P-L dit :

   8 février 2010 à 11 h 19 min

   À voir, Villedieu se fait casser par… ses lecteurs:

   http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/carnets/2010/02/06/127701.shtml?auteur=2091

3. Matrix dit :

   8 février 2010 à 12 h 59 min

   Pendant ce temps nos tartes miss météo des médias font danser le monde pour sensibiliser le gouvernement aux changements climatiques.

   Et sur le site de Radio-Canada, on pouvait lire plein de monde dire que la tempête sur la côte est des États-unis était sûrement une cause des changements climatique.

   La religion gagne du terrain sur les moutons au cerveau faible.

4. matvail2002 dit :

   8 février 2010 à 13 h 02 min

   Lorsque l’argument de certaines personnes se résume à dire que les sceptiques sont financés par ceci et cela, autant dire que cette attaque vaut autant aux scientifiques qui doivent parfois déformer certaines conclusions pour dire que les états ou pourvoyeurs qui financent leurs recherches veulent entendre.

   À voir, Villedieu se fait casser par… ses lecteurs.

   Je suis surpris de voir que les commentaires commencent de plus à plus à démontrer la méfiance de plusieurs spécialistes. Justement, en tant que société d’état qui est payé à même nos taxes et impôts, la SRC devra se rendre à l’évidence qu’elle doit montrer les deux côtés de la médaille.

   Malheureusement, l’argument de plusieurs réchauffistes se résume de plus en plus à celui d’attaquer le messager. Comme que de dire qu’une simple science est alors aussitôt devenue un quasi-culte dont on doit faire une inquisition envers ceux qui ne pensent pas comme le culte en question.

   J’ai aussi l’impression qu’il existe un nombre de spécialistes dans ce domaine qui ont un minimum de bon sens, sauf que le problème est que le domaine en question est davantage reconnu par des quasi-politiciens ou gourous qui utilisent plus l’exercice de la foi que de la science pour faire valoir leurs arguments.

   En somme, tout scientifique sait qu’à la base, rien n’est sûr à 100%.

5. matvail2002 dit :

   8 février 2010 à 13 h 09 min

   Pendant ce temps nos tartes miss météo des médias font danser le monde pour sensibiliser le gouvernement aux changements climatiques.

   Et sur le site de Radio-Canada, on pouvait lire plein de monde dire que la tempête sur la côte est des États-unis était sûrement une cause des changements climatique.

   Vous savez aussi bien que moi qu’il s’agit d’un argument ad nauseam lorsque qu’on sait que les tempêtes de neige sur la côte Est des États-Unis n’ont rien d’un phénomène extraordinaire, tout comme les tornades dans le Midwest Américain. On peut ensuite utiliser cet argument pour n’importe quelle tempête ou catastrophe naturelle.

   La religion gagne du terrain sur les moutons au cerveau faible.

   Le problème est que beaucoup de gens ne sont pas capables de croire que les médias ont parfois un degré d’analyse minimal tout en étant pas capables de simplement reporter l’information pour que l’individu décide de lui-même. Les gauchistes sont fort à décrier FOX News, mais je réalise que certains médias (et surtout la SRC, la BBC et NPR) sont pires car ils sont supposés neutres tout en étant financés par le gouvernement avec des moyens souvent très grands en leur ensemble.

6. steph_anne dit :

   8 février 2010 à 13 h 56 min

   Les gauchistes sont fort à décrier FOX News, mais je réalise que certains médias (et surtout la SRC, la BBC et NPR) sont pires car ils sont supposés neutres tout en étant financés par le gouvernement avec des moyens souvent très grands en leur ensemble.

   Je suis à droite et je trouve pathétique FoxNews qui n’a pas hésité à faire la promotion à quelques reprises de l’idéologie créationisme…

   Bon, vous ne savez pas comment fonctionne une salle des nouvelles…

   Un bulletin de nouvelles provenant DE L’ENTREPRISE PRIVÉ…

   C’est un show de nouvelle…

   L’objectif… les côtes d’écoute…

   L’objectif prioritaire n’est pas de donner l’information juste, neutre, utile…

   Non!

   L’objectif c’est de faire réagir le monde qui écoute! Leur donner une émotion!

   Et remarquez comment débute presque toujours les topos…

   Une maman qui pleure… la sirène d’un camion d’incendie… presque toujoursd avec un élém,ent punch au départ… (pour qu’on arrête de faire la vaiselle… ou qu’on lâche le repas… lolll)

   Il y a une recette très clair pour faire des topos…

   Deuzio, c’est de l’entreprise privée! (sauf Radio-Canada et Radio-Québec)

   Elles ne font pas bien le travail selon vous?

   Elles ne s’auto-réularise pas assez?

   Pourtant c’est du privé 😉

   Et PS: les salles des nouvelles ne peuvent pas être neutre… Les nouvelles sont le résultat des croyances de plusieurs personnes…

   La seule façon d’empêcher ça… c’est d’enlever les individus des salles nouvelles!

7. steph_anne dit :

   8 février 2010 à 13 h 58 min

   Quelqu’un d’une salle des nouvelles bien connue disait: ne laissé jamais une bonne histoire se faire étouffé par la vérité…

   Et c’était dans le privé 😉

8. derteilzeitberliner dit :

   8 février 2010 à 14 h 47 min

   mais je réalise que certains médias (et surtout la SRC, la BBC et NPR) sont pires car ils sont supposés neutres tout en étant financés par le gouvernement avec des moyens souvent très grands en leur ensemble.

   Le médias public occidental porte notoirement à gauche et, malgré les promesses de correction faites après des enquêtes dans de nombreux pays, ça ne change que très peu.

   Le parti-pris à gauche a même été une raison de l’autorisation des stations privées en Allemagne. Mais il n’y a aucune différence idéologique entre les deux secteurs quand tu regardes.

   Ah mais tiens, un cadeau:

   un reportage de 2007 sur la vente de bière par l’association libertarienne d’Islande

9. steph_anne dit :

   8 février 2010 à 15 h 10 min

   à quel gauche? à votre gauche à vous?

   Pcq tout est là pour la différence…

   La droite est à votre gauche lol

   Pour le reportage, je parle pas cette langue, désolé…

10. steph_anne dit :

    8 février 2010 à 15 h 31 min

    Mais pour en revenir au billet…

    Je trouve la position Indienne beaucoup plus nuancé que celle des Libertariens qui sans aucune preuve annonce qu’il n’y a aucun changement climatique…

    L’Inde fais la nuance entre l’intégrisme climatique et l’environnement

    Ce que ne font pas les libertariens!

11. polq dit :

    8 février 2010 à 17 h 31 min

    Message de Glenn Beck à Jean Charest

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p513hCZf2b0

12. David dit :

    8 février 2010 à 21 h 22 min

    Sur Twitter, j’ai relayé à François Cardinal les articles de la presse britannique sur les nombreuses erreurs (fraudes) que l’on peut retrouver dans le dernier rapport du GIEC.

    Sa réaction ?

    Il m’a bloqué !

    Voilà qui en dit long…

13. David dit :

    8 février 2010 à 21 h 55 min

    Je trouve la position Indienne beaucoup plus nuancé que celle des Libertariens qui sans aucune preuve annonce qu’il n’y a aucun changement climatique…

    Ce sont les réchauffistes qui n’ont aucune preuve.

14. steph_anne dit :

    8 février 2010 à 22 h 13 min

    Ce sont les réchauffistes qui n’ont aucune preuve.

    Tu pousses un peu fort là…

    ouille… (petit emoticone qui se pète la tête sur le mur)

    Je crois qu’il y a assez de groupe différents dans le monde qui étudient le dossier à différents niveaux…

    Maintenant il y a une nuance entre les scénarios catastrophes et ta position qui nie le réchauffement climatique!

    La vérité se trouve toujours quelque part au centre!

15. David dit :

    8 février 2010 à 22 h 22 min

    La vérité se trouve toujours quelque part au centre!

    Pierre dit: 3+5=8

    Paul dit: 3+8=25

    steph_anne conclue: 3+8=16,5

    …

16. steph_anne dit :

    8 février 2010 à 22 h 55 min

    Pour un calcul mathématique simple… non

    Pour des théories économique oui!

    Au fait es tu en train de nous dire que tu connais la vérité absolue? Tu possèdes la maitrise parfaite et divine de l’économie?

    ouille… ca sonne gourou ça…

    😉

17. David dit :

    8 février 2010 à 23 h 17 min

    Pour un calcul mathématique simple… non

    Pour des théories économique oui!

    Tu reconnais toi-même que les économiste sont incapable de prédire et de planifier l’économie mais tu voudrais quand même avoir une économie planifiée par des économiste juste pour le plaisir d’être au centre…

    Désolé mais c’est incohérent.

    « I most emphatically advocate a black-and-white view of the world. What is meant by the expression « black and white »? It means good and evil. Before you can identify anything as gray, as middle of the road, you have to know what is black and what is white, because gray is merely a mixture of the two. And when you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil. »
    -Ayn Rand

    Au fait es tu en train de nous dire que tu connais la vérité absolue? Tu possèdes la maitrise parfaite et divine de l’économie?

    ouille… ca sonne gourou ça…

    Non, et c’est justement pour cette raison que je suis libertarien.

    Je suis libertarien parce que personne ne possède la vérité absolue et c’est pour cette raison que l’on doit laisser un ordre spontané émergé.

18. polq dit :

    8 février 2010 à 23 h 22 min

    Bienvenue dans le club des bloqués de François Cardinal sur Twitter!!!

    J’avoue que je ne sais plus comment l’appeler… François Cardinal ou le Cardinal François???

19. David dit :

    8 février 2010 à 23 h 27 min

    Bienvenue dans le club des bloqués de François Cardinal sur Twitter!!!

    J’avoue que je ne sais plus comment l’appeler… François Cardinal ou le Cardinal François???

    Je ne suis donc pas le seul !!!

    Cette petite anecdote montre bien l’obcurentisme des écologistes.

    Et le pire c’est que ce type est un journaliste. Un journaliste qui ignore délibérément des faits !

20. steph_anne dit :

    8 février 2010 à 23 h 34 min

    Tu reconnais toi-même que les économiste sont incapable de prédire et de planifier l’économie mais tu voudrais quand même avoir une économie planifiée par des économiste juste pour le plaisir d’être au centre…

    Désolé mais c’est incohérent.

    Tout d’abors aucun plaisir d’être au centre…

    Deuzio… tu vois comment tu extrapoles?

    Ou tu n’a rien compris au principe d’économie planifiée…

    Ou tu me fais une joke…

    Mais je crois à la joke…

    Je parle pas dutout d’économie planifiée…
    Je dis qu’il faut un minimum de règlementation

    Je suis drolement loin de l’économie planifié ou d’une économie qui règlemente même les position sexuelle… loll

21. steph_anne dit :

    9 février 2010 à 0 h 04 min

    Je ne suis donc pas le seul !!!

    Cette petite anecdote montre bien l’obcurentisme des écologistes.

    Et le pire c’est que ce type est un journaliste. Un journaliste qui ignore délibérément des faits !

    Tout d’abord, je trouve ça désolant si c’est comme vous le dites…

    J’ai juste une remarque c’est que vous appliquez ça à tous les écologistes….

    C’est un sophisme…

    Tous les écolos ne sont pas comme ça…

    Tous les écolos ne sont pas intégristes

    Mais les intégristes écolos, moi je les appelle les Environnementaleux…

    fin de la paranthèse

    PS: si c’est un journaliste (je connais pas), pourquoi ne pas faire une plainte à la salle des nouvelles? Au rédacteur en chef ou à l’éditeur?

    On peut ne pas être d’accord mais je considère que d’empêcher des gens de débattrent nuie à leur cause anyway…

22. David dit :

    9 février 2010 à 1 h 34 min

    tu vois comment tu extrapoles?

    Je te mets en face de tes contradictions.

    Ou tu n’a rien compris au principe d’économie planifiée…

    Ou tu me fais une joke…

    Mais je crois à la joke…

    Je parle pas dutout d’économie planifiée…
    Je dis qu’il faut un minimum de règlementation

    Réglementation = planification.

    C’est s’imaginer que des bureaucrates peuvent tout prévoir et tout diriger.

    Désolé mais la planification de l’économie, au travers de plan qunquénal ou de réglementation est illusoire. Tu le dis toi-même, aucun économiste le peut prévoir le futur.

    C’est pourquoi il y a toujours des conséquence inattendus aux réglementations (qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête).

    Tu le dis toi-même, les économistes ne peuvent rien prédire alors s’imaginer qu’il peuvent réglementé l’économie c’est stupide.

    « Do not expect too much from new regulations. Tomorrow’s crisis is often a result of the solution to the last crisis. »

    
    Regulation and Its Unintended Consequences
    by Johan Norberg

    Most bankers deserve the backlash they are experiencing right now. The absurd mistakes and sheer stupidity we have seen in the financial markets in the last decade are not what we were supposed to expect from the Masters of the Universe. And the cost of the bailouts gives a whole new meaning to the concept of « bank robber. »

    But bankers are not the only ones we should look at in a new light. Another casualty of the crisis should be belief in the powers and virtues of government regulators, because their fingerprints are all over the crime scene as well.

    There are 39,000 individuals working full time to regulate the financial markets in the U.S. alone. What did they do when the bubble was inflated? Well, they helped inflate it.

    In the 1970s and 1980s, we learned that regulation of product markets caused many problems. The public choice school taught us that when regulators have to choose between increasing their powers and budgets and what improves society, they often choose the latter. Even well-meaning regulation often produces unintended consequences that turn small problems into big ones.

    But when the financial markets seemed to be doing reasonably well, that criticism never really had an impact on the world of finance.

    What a difference a crisis makes! A detailed anatomy of the bubble shows that many of the policies and regulations meant to reduce financial risk actually increased it. The most obvious example is the government’s policy of bailing out financial institutions to avoid crises, which made it more likely that they will engage in risky behavior. And the Fed’s attempt to abolish recessions with drastic reductions of the interest rate it sets resulted in the biggest credit bubble in history, and one of the worst recessions.

    But there are several other examples in this crisis. In the 1970s, the SEC gave the big rating agencies a regulatory role. They got the right to officially define risk, and other investors were forced to abide by them; many funds were not allowed to invest in anything that was not considered investment grade, and other institutions were forced to hold more capital if they did.

    This oligopoly was granted in order to control risk. But the institutions used their new role to inflate the ratings, and dangerous mortgage-backed securities were suddenly considered risk-free. The deal would get the same generous treatment even if it was structured by cows, as an analyst at a big rating firm said in an internal discussion. Since the cows paid well, and the market was forced to follow the ratings anyway, why not?

    The banks did not hold these securities in a transparent way, but in the opaque « shadow banking sector,  » in an attempt to reduce risk. The smartest bank regulators in the industrialized world met for six years to produce the Basel agreements on capital requirements for banks. Their requirements made it expensive for banks to hold assets – like mortgage-backed securities – on their balance sheets, but very profitable to put them in non-transparent conduits or vehicles financed by short-term loans on the market.

    So even if the best and the brightest introduce regulation because they think it is in mankind’s best interest, there are unintended consequences. Indeed, bureaucracies and governmental authorities also have their own agendas and their own interests, and sometimes that trumps social welfare. One reason why financial regulators did not notice what was going on was that they were engaged in turf war. One former SEC commissioner admitted that his agency failed to develop open marketplaces for mortgage-backed securities because it was « distracted. » The object of its time and resources: grabbing power from other government agencies by starting to regulate hedge funds and introduce new types of supervision of mutual funds.

    We need to take another look at regulation. The world is a complex place, and often progress is made by trial and error. Introducing a standard means confining everybody to the present knowledge of the bureaucrats, and preventing individuals and businesses from adapting to new information as it is discovered. This cannot be avoided in every instance, but it is important to always evaluate it critically and to keep unregulated parts of the economy unregulated so that we don’t put all of our eggs in one basket.

    The unregulated hedge funds were still standing and supplied the economy with liquidity when everything else failed last September, partly because they were not subject to the same capital requirements as other sectors. If the attempts to regulate them now were to succeed, we would give all financial actors the same Achilles’ heal. It might not be likely that this is the heel that will be hit the next time, but if it is, everybody falls at the same time.

    Do not expect too much from new regulations. Tomorrow’s crisis is often a result of the solution to the last crisis.

    

    "No matter what pundits say, we are nowhere near a laissez-faire situation."

    
    Regulators cannot avert next crisis
    By Johan Norberg

    As usual after a financial crisis, we hear demands for new controls and regulations to stop it from happening again. But since every crisis has led to thousands of new pages of regulation, why is it that regulation doesn't stop crises from happening again? No matter what pundits say, we are nowhere near a laissez-faire situation. Look no further than the US federal institutions in Washington, DC, and we find 12,113 individuals working full time to regulate the financial markets. What did they do with the powers they had?
    
    Made mistakes. American politicians, central banks and regulators were just as eager as speculators to expand the housing bubble. They just had a bigger pump.

    The US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates from 6.5 per cent to 1per cent between 2001 and 2003, and housing prices soared. Starting in 1995, the government threatened banks and thrifts with regulations and legal challenges if they did not extend more loans to poor neighbourhoods and a government-sponsored company such as Fannie Mae used its state guarantees to purchase more risky loans and expand the sub-prime market.

    Is the solution to the crisis really to give more power to people and institutions that contributed to bringing it about?

    The problem with regulation is that it is always a response to the last crisis. Generals fight the last war and always try to avoid the mistakes made then. So we get new rules that target the mistakes that everybody already knows they must avoid. The next possible crisis and its causes are so far unknown, and our regulations may have no effect or even make them worse.

    After the exposure of accounting scandals in companies such as Enron, we have seen more drastic accounting regulations. We all wanted to avoid another Enron. "Fair value accounting" was one of the results, which means that financial institutions had to mark their assets to market. If a bank has mortgage-backed securities for sale, their value is registered as the price it could get if it sold them on the market today, rather than taking historic prices into account.

    It sounds reasonable, but the problem is that when there is panic in the market, no liquidity and no buyers, that price is very low. So suddenly all institutions see the value of their assets drop at the same time. If they sell to make up for the loss, the prices fall even more, and accountants keep marking down assets. The result is that a bank or thrift that looked very stable a few days ago can suddenly turn out to be insolvent, at least on paper.

    William Isaac, who used to be chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has said that if fair value accounting was in place in the 1980s, all the big banks in the US would have collapsed and the recession might have become a depression.

    These accounting rules are "like fighting a fire with gasoline", as Steve Forbes has pointed out.

    In other words, regulation that was introduced to solve yesterday's problems can easily become a big problem around the corner.

    The only thing we know for sure is that we don't know where the next problem is going to come from. Our best way of preparing is to be flexible and to make sure that individuals and institutions are ready to learn and adapt as soon as new information is available. Regulation that locks in particular solutions or blocks others could stand in the way of that flexibility.

    Another result of the accounting scandals was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which required US companies to introduce rigorous internal controls and to send regular, detailed financial reports to the federal authorities. The result has been new costs for American companies, fewer public offerings and a flight of talented directors.

    The present financial crisis has swept away the independent investment banks on Wall Street. It is now obvious that they couldn't afford the risks they took without having bank deposits that have made life easier for big commercial banks. But why did independent investment banks evolve in the first place? Because American politicians outlawed universal banks as part of the New Deal, a ban that was in place for 66 years.

    The Glass-Steagall Act, which enforced that ban, was repealed in 1999: one piece of deregulation on which some people now blame the crisis. On the contrary, it was important and it was done in the nick of time.

    If it hadn't been repealed, J.P. Morgan would not have been able to buy Bear Stearns, Bank of America could not have bought Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would not have been able to save themselves by becoming bank holding companies.

    Regulations and controls often result in new difficulties even when the intentions of policymakers are good and the hopes are real. That does not even begin to address the problem that a lot of new regulations are just symbols, enacted to show people that politicians have done something, even if they know that it does not really address the problem. It follows the politicians' logic from the British television series Yes, Prime Minister: "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it."

    This logic is as old as the crises. After the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, the British parliament delayed the Industrial Revolution by impeding the free formation of joint stock companies for more than 100 years.

    And after the Depression, American politicians made risk-handling more difficult for two generations by banning stock options.
    
    Regulators and politicians always fight the last crisis, and when they do they run the risk of making the next crisis more severe.

    As we don't know what the next trigger will be, we can't regulate against it without introducing such drastic measures that financial markets cease to function effectively.

    And that would be a terrible loss, much, much worse than any financial crisis we could imagine. Buying bad assets from financial institutions may be a bad idea and may cost the US treasury $US700 billion ($935billion), but financial markets help the world economy to create that amount twice a week.

    Speculators and investment banks have shown that it is difficult to keep a cool head when there are large sums of money at stake. But the same goes for politicians and regulators. And the only thing more dangerous than financial crises may be our way of responding to them.
    
    Johan Norberg is the author of In Defence of Global Capitalism and a senior fellow of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

23. steph_anne dit :

    9 février 2010 à 2 h 04 min

    Réglementation = planification.

    C’est s’imaginer que des bureaucrates peuvent tout prévoir et tout diriger.

    Désolé mais la planification de l’économie, au travers de plan qunquénal ou de réglementation est illusoire. Tu le dis toi-même, aucun économiste le peut prévoir le futur.

    C’est pourquoi il y a toujours des conséquence inattendus aux réglementations (qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête).

    Tu le dis toi-même, les économistes ne peuvent rien prédire alors s’imaginer qu’il peuvent réglementé l’économie c’est stupide.

    Règlementation = planification?

    ouchhhh

    Ok je comprends maintenant David… on part de loin…

    On parle même pas le même language…

    C’est comme si tu me disais que conduire une automobile = course automobile…

    On est vraiment pas sur la même planète…

    Et les couleurs, on ne les voie pas de la même couleur…

    rouge c’est noir pour toi…

24. David dit :

    9 février 2010 à 2 h 13 min

    Règlementation = planification?

    ouchhhh

    Ok je comprends maintenant David… on part de loin…

    On parle même pas le même language…

    Tu as raison, on ne parles pas du tout le même langage.

    Et la raison est simple: tes connaissances sont trop limité…

    Il est difficile de discuter littérature avec un analphabète…

    Donc laisses moi parfaite ton éducation.

    Oui, Règlementation = planification.

    Lis ceci et tu va apprendre quelque chose:

    « Do not expect too much from new regulations. Tomorrow’s crisis is often a result of the solution to the last crisis. »

    
    Regulation and Its Unintended Consequences
    by Johan Norberg

    Most bankers deserve the backlash they are experiencing right now. The absurd mistakes and sheer stupidity we have seen in the financial markets in the last decade are not what we were supposed to expect from the Masters of the Universe. And the cost of the bailouts gives a whole new meaning to the concept of « bank robber. »

    But bankers are not the only ones we should look at in a new light. Another casualty of the crisis should be belief in the powers and virtues of government regulators, because their fingerprints are all over the crime scene as well.

    There are 39,000 individuals working full time to regulate the financial markets in the U.S. alone. What did they do when the bubble was inflated? Well, they helped inflate it.

    In the 1970s and 1980s, we learned that regulation of product markets caused many problems. The public choice school taught us that when regulators have to choose between increasing their powers and budgets and what improves society, they often choose the latter. Even well-meaning regulation often produces unintended consequences that turn small problems into big ones.

    But when the financial markets seemed to be doing reasonably well, that criticism never really had an impact on the world of finance.

    What a difference a crisis makes! A detailed anatomy of the bubble shows that many of the policies and regulations meant to reduce financial risk actually increased it. The most obvious example is the government’s policy of bailing out financial institutions to avoid crises, which made it more likely that they will engage in risky behavior. And the Fed’s attempt to abolish recessions with drastic reductions of the interest rate it sets resulted in the biggest credit bubble in history, and one of the worst recessions.

    But there are several other examples in this crisis. In the 1970s, the SEC gave the big rating agencies a regulatory role. They got the right to officially define risk, and other investors were forced to abide by them; many funds were not allowed to invest in anything that was not considered investment grade, and other institutions were forced to hold more capital if they did.

    This oligopoly was granted in order to control risk. But the institutions used their new role to inflate the ratings, and dangerous mortgage-backed securities were suddenly considered risk-free. The deal would get the same generous treatment even if it was structured by cows, as an analyst at a big rating firm said in an internal discussion. Since the cows paid well, and the market was forced to follow the ratings anyway, why not?

    The banks did not hold these securities in a transparent way, but in the opaque « shadow banking sector,  » in an attempt to reduce risk. The smartest bank regulators in the industrialized world met for six years to produce the Basel agreements on capital requirements for banks. Their requirements made it expensive for banks to hold assets – like mortgage-backed securities – on their balance sheets, but very profitable to put them in non-transparent conduits or vehicles financed by short-term loans on the market.

    So even if the best and the brightest introduce regulation because they think it is in mankind’s best interest, there are unintended consequences. Indeed, bureaucracies and governmental authorities also have their own agendas and their own interests, and sometimes that trumps social welfare. One reason why financial regulators did not notice what was going on was that they were engaged in turf war. One former SEC commissioner admitted that his agency failed to develop open marketplaces for mortgage-backed securities because it was « distracted. » The object of its time and resources: grabbing power from other government agencies by starting to regulate hedge funds and introduce new types of supervision of mutual funds.

    We need to take another look at regulation. The world is a complex place, and often progress is made by trial and error. Introducing a standard means confining everybody to the present knowledge of the bureaucrats, and preventing individuals and businesses from adapting to new information as it is discovered. This cannot be avoided in every instance, but it is important to always evaluate it critically and to keep unregulated parts of the economy unregulated so that we don’t put all of our eggs in one basket.

    The unregulated hedge funds were still standing and supplied the economy with liquidity when everything else failed last September, partly because they were not subject to the same capital requirements as other sectors. If the attempts to regulate them now were to succeed, we would give all financial actors the same Achilles’ heal. It might not be likely that this is the heel that will be hit the next time, but if it is, everybody falls at the same time.

    Do not expect too much from new regulations. Tomorrow’s crisis is often a result of the solution to the last crisis.

    

    "No matter what pundits say, we are nowhere near a laissez-faire situation."

    
    Regulators cannot avert next crisis
    By Johan Norberg

    As usual after a financial crisis, we hear demands for new controls and regulations to stop it from happening again. But since every crisis has led to thousands of new pages of regulation, why is it that regulation doesn't stop crises from happening again? No matter what pundits say, we are nowhere near a laissez-faire situation. Look no further than the US federal institutions in Washington, DC, and we find 12,113 individuals working full time to regulate the financial markets. What did they do with the powers they had?
    
    Made mistakes. American politicians, central banks and regulators were just as eager as speculators to expand the housing bubble. They just had a bigger pump.

    The US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates from 6.5 per cent to 1per cent between 2001 and 2003, and housing prices soared. Starting in 1995, the government threatened banks and thrifts with regulations and legal challenges if they did not extend more loans to poor neighbourhoods and a government-sponsored company such as Fannie Mae used its state guarantees to purchase more risky loans and expand the sub-prime market.

    Is the solution to the crisis really to give more power to people and institutions that contributed to bringing it about?

    The problem with regulation is that it is always a response to the last crisis. Generals fight the last war and always try to avoid the mistakes made then. So we get new rules that target the mistakes that everybody already knows they must avoid. The next possible crisis and its causes are so far unknown, and our regulations may have no effect or even make them worse.

    After the exposure of accounting scandals in companies such as Enron, we have seen more drastic accounting regulations. We all wanted to avoid another Enron. "Fair value accounting" was one of the results, which means that financial institutions had to mark their assets to market. If a bank has mortgage-backed securities for sale, their value is registered as the price it could get if it sold them on the market today, rather than taking historic prices into account.

    It sounds reasonable, but the problem is that when there is panic in the market, no liquidity and no buyers, that price is very low. So suddenly all institutions see the value of their assets drop at the same time. If they sell to make up for the loss, the prices fall even more, and accountants keep marking down assets. The result is that a bank or thrift that looked very stable a few days ago can suddenly turn out to be insolvent, at least on paper.

    William Isaac, who used to be chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has said that if fair value accounting was in place in the 1980s, all the big banks in the US would have collapsed and the recession might have become a depression.

    These accounting rules are "like fighting a fire with gasoline", as Steve Forbes has pointed out.

    In other words, regulation that was introduced to solve yesterday's problems can easily become a big problem around the corner.

    The only thing we know for sure is that we don't know where the next problem is going to come from. Our best way of preparing is to be flexible and to make sure that individuals and institutions are ready to learn and adapt as soon as new information is available. Regulation that locks in particular solutions or blocks others could stand in the way of that flexibility.

    Another result of the accounting scandals was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which required US companies to introduce rigorous internal controls and to send regular, detailed financial reports to the federal authorities. The result has been new costs for American companies, fewer public offerings and a flight of talented directors.

    The present financial crisis has swept away the independent investment banks on Wall Street. It is now obvious that they couldn't afford the risks they took without having bank deposits that have made life easier for big commercial banks. But why did independent investment banks evolve in the first place? Because American politicians outlawed universal banks as part of the New Deal, a ban that was in place for 66 years.

    The Glass-Steagall Act, which enforced that ban, was repealed in 1999: one piece of deregulation on which some people now blame the crisis. On the contrary, it was important and it was done in the nick of time.

    If it hadn't been repealed, J.P. Morgan would not have been able to buy Bear Stearns, Bank of America could not have bought Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would not have been able to save themselves by becoming bank holding companies.

    Regulations and controls often result in new difficulties even when the intentions of policymakers are good and the hopes are real. That does not even begin to address the problem that a lot of new regulations are just symbols, enacted to show people that politicians have done something, even if they know that it does not really address the problem. It follows the politicians' logic from the British television series Yes, Prime Minister: "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it."

    This logic is as old as the crises. After the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, the British parliament delayed the Industrial Revolution by impeding the free formation of joint stock companies for more than 100 years.

    And after the Depression, American politicians made risk-handling more difficult for two generations by banning stock options.
    
    Regulators and politicians always fight the last crisis, and when they do they run the risk of making the next crisis more severe.

    As we don't know what the next trigger will be, we can't regulate against it without introducing such drastic measures that financial markets cease to function effectively.

    And that would be a terrible loss, much, much worse than any financial crisis we could imagine. Buying bad assets from financial institutions may be a bad idea and may cost the US treasury $US700 billion ($935billion), but financial markets help the world economy to create that amount twice a week.

    Speculators and investment banks have shown that it is difficult to keep a cool head when there are large sums of money at stake. But the same goes for politicians and regulators. And the only thing more dangerous than financial crises may be our way of responding to them.
    
    Johan Norberg is the author of In Defence of Global Capitalism and a senior fellow of the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

    P.S.: Tu lis l’anglais ?

25. polq dit :

    9 février 2010 à 8 h 41 min

    ironie du sort, le Cardinal François fais une chronique sur l’Église qui veut un concile vert… Ça devient vraiment une religion toute cette vague.

    http://www.cyberpresse.ca/environnement/201002/08/01-947610-leglise-tient-un-concile-vert.php