J'aurais personnellement ajouté un problème fondamental de concurrence au tableau (après tout, l'existence sur longue période de profits hors norme au sein d'une industrie donnée est théoriquement la marque d'un fonctionnement imparfait de la concurrence - cf Big Pharma), mais voir le principal chroniqueur économique du FT prendre ce genre de position après plusieurs années de chants tonitruants à la gloire de la dérégulation financière et de la financiarisation de l'économie est déjà assez gratifiant comme cela...
Way to go, Martin
(...) So what we have is a risk-loving industry guaranteed as a public utility. One result has been insufficient capital. That permits splendid returns in good times. But the capital may well prove inadequate in bad ones. The loss of capital could well lead to a tightening of credit in the years ahead.
If so, the structure and regulation of banking might have to be reconsidered, again. One possibility would be higher capital requirements. This would lower peak returns and so reduce the chances of subsequent negative returns. Mr Smithers and Prof Wood suggest a 40 per cent increase in capital for the UK. Other possibilities are measures to make regulation easier: narrow banking is an old favourite, although hard to make work. Henry Kaufman, a highly experienced observer of credit markets, suggests intense scrutiny of banks deemed “too big to fail”.
What seems increasingly clear is that the combination of generous government guarantees with rampant profit-making in inadequately capitalised institutions is an accident waiting to happen – again and again and again. Either the banking industry should be treated as a utility, with regulated returns, or it should be viewed as a profit-seeking industry that operates in accordance with the laws of the market, including, if necessary, mass bankruptcies. Since we cannot accept the latter, I suspect we will be forced to move towards the former. Little can be done now. But when the recovery begins, we must impose higher capital requirements.
* ‘Do Banks Have Adequate Capital?’, Report 298, November 7 2007, http://www.smithers.co.uk/ (subscribers only);** Elroy Dimson and others, ‘Triumph of the Optimists’, Princeton University Press, 2002
martin.wolf@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
