Good News, the draft new “Basel” rules from the Bank of International Settlements are just out and are approved subject to detail. So is this the start of a new beginning?
Banking Regulation is not exactly a subject that excites passion, although the reaction from “God’s Workers” was that the new rules might make it harder for them to perform their essential service to mankind (and thus more expensive). And thus the overview put out by the Central Bankers Club in Basel onto the Web, is a masterpiece of political correctness and restrained “gravitas” http://www.basel-iii-accord.com/. Naturally no blame at all is assigned (or admitted) for any part of the recent spell of troubling events.
As if those “events” that “we” are too polite to mention by name, had nothing to do with prevailing regulations at the time.
At one point in the internal Q&A, a question is asked:
“Is Basel III a brand new framework?”
Answer:
“Absolutely not; Basel III is Basel II plus the lessons learned from the market crisis”.
Ah-ha…Basel II with bells on and lessons were learned!
Well that’s reassuring; but I’d love to know precisely what were the…“lessons learned”? No clue is given about that. Perhaps the Basel Committee has a divine plan; or perhaps they didn’t want to upset anyone by pointing fingers; particularly if the fingers were to be pointed at central bankers? There again, pointing fingers at central bankers is a mug’s game; for example, the history of The Bank of International Settlements, which was set up originally to process payments under the Treaty of Versailles, included a spell as a Nazi controlled finance house during World War Two, which is why Roosevelt wanted it shut-down after the war.
But even the mighty President-Who-Won-The-War had no luck pointing fingers in that direction, thus he was thwarted by the Machiavellian efforts of the current economic pin-up boy, none other than John Maynard Keynes.
And notwithstanding that a number of their “top-officials” at that time were convicted of war crimes, no one has ever accused “The Club” of financing construction of gas chambers…or more recently, helping to crash the world financial system. There again, crashing a financial system is a different kettle of fish from, for example, crashing an aeroplane.
When you are figuring out how to make sure a plane doesn’t fall out of the sky (again), most people try…
