Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24
US House Prices Trend Forecast 2024 to 2026 - 11th Oct 24
US Housing Market Analysis - Immigration Drives House Prices Higher - 30th Sep 24
Stock Market October Correction - 30th Sep 24
The Folly of Tariffs and Trade Wars - 30th Sep 24
Gold: 5 principles to help you stay ahead of price turns - 30th Sep 24
The Everything Rally will Spark multi year Bull Market - 30th Sep 24
US FIXED MORTGAGES LIMITING SUPPLY - 23rd Sep 24
US Housing Market Free Equity - 23rd Sep 24
US Rate Cut FOMO In Stock Market Correction Window - 22nd Sep 24
US State Demographics - 22nd Sep 24
Gold and Silver Shine as the Fed Cuts Rates: What’s Next? - 22nd Sep 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks:Nothing Can Topple This Market - 22nd Sep 24
US Population Growth Rate - 17th Sep 24
Are Stocks Overheating? - 17th Sep 24
Sentiment Speaks: Silver Is At A Major Turning Point - 17th Sep 24
If The Stock Market Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get? - 17th Sep 24
IMMIGRATION DRIVES HOUSE PRICES HIGHER - 12th Sep 24
Global Debt Bubble - 12th Sep 24
Gold’s Outlook CPI Data - 12th Sep 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

How to Fix Financial Services Regulation

Politics / Market Regulation May 14, 2012 - 10:22 AM GMT

By: Paul_Tustain

Politics

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleAs I was reading of yet another spectacular mismatch between bank managers' competence and their remuneration, and this time at JP Morgan no less, I realized there is a simple solution which really could be implemented.

Make the cost of regulation zero - or very nearly - for unlimited liability partnerships. Then let judicious self-interest, exercized by the partners themselves, do the rest.


My father was what they now call an 'investment banker'. His firm got it wrong by expanding business into the 1970s' slump, and when it went wrong the Official Assignee took everything he owned. That was in the days when partners had joint and several liability, which meant that all the top management of a firm were personally liable for the entire debts of their business.

Joint and several liability quickly weeded out the incompetents, the gamblers and the unlucky (my poor old Dad, I like to think). It made managers look very carefully at their colleagues' strategies, and concentrated everyone's efforts on controlling risks, rather than seeking bonus-building nominal profits.

The approach was discarded in 1986 after 150 years of pretty effective operation. It wasn't perfect (what is?) but we were all very stupid to think we could do better by replacing the natural damper of direct personal liability with a combination of salaried and bonused managers, and sixty thousand pages of regulations.

I realised this morning that official regulation of financial services has become so onerous and so unsuccessful at loss prevention that joint and several liability could easily be re-introduced. All it would need would be a subsidiary arm of the regulator, set up exclusively for the regulation of investment businesses run by unlimited liability partnerships.

Lots of reputable financial professionals do not get big bonuses, because they work competently in the low-risk, low-return areas of the industry. Yet within the regulated sphere of financial services, there are so many complex rules that even these firms have to employ more compliance officers than accountants, while at the same time funding the wretchedly unfair Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the UK, or Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in the US - which is a bit like being forced to pay for the car insurance of your drunken neighbor.

They should be given the choice of submitting to financial services, or choosing a simpler system, where they put up as collateral their house, their car, their holidays and their children's school fees, and - within reason - are left to get on with managing their business risks as they see fit.

Making management collectively liable for their mistakes has lots of benefits.

#1. Size - Because partners all want to be able to understand their whole business it encourages smaller and less systemically dangerous organisations - ones which are not 'too big to fail'

#2. Growth and competition - It encourages business formation, something which has ground to a halt now, because of the huge cost of setting up a compliant organisation;

#3. Attention to detail - It forces revenue generators to be more critical about risks, rather than leaving it to formulae which pass the rules and get boxes ticked, but do not work in practice;

#4. Liability - It encourages senior management stability and accountability, and suppresses the job merry-go-round whereby careers advance by sweeping problems temporarily out of sight and quickly changing jobs;

#5. Rewards - It directly links remuneration to risk, as well as to performance;

#6. Clawback - It keeps all prior remuneration still in the compensation pot, to be reclaimed in the event of future investor losses.

Our experiment with rulebooks, regulators and salaried managers has been a bit of a disaster. Maybe a partial return to the old ways is not such a bad idea.

By Paul Tustain

BullionVault.com

Paul Tustain is the founder of BullionVault.com – with 13,000 customers and $600m in gold bars, now the world's largest store of privately-owned investment gold bullion.

(c) BullionVault 2012

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in