Canadians are Boring
Paul Krugman also likes Elizabeth Warren, and apparently, Canadians as well.
Yes, they are boring, he says, but in some cases that’s a good thing. Such as with banking! Unfortunately, the banking headlines in the U.S. have recently been about meltdowns and credit freezes. In this spirit, he argues in favor of an agency model on the Canadian’s independent Financial Consumer Agency, which among other things stabilized their economy while the rest of the world was rocked in part by the eruption of subprime mortagages and other risky loans. Here’s his argument:
“Above all, Canada’s experience seems to support those who say that the way to keep banking safe is to keep it boring — that is, to limit the extent to which banks can take on risk. The United States used to have a boring banking system, but Reagan-era deregulation made things dangerously interesting. Canada, by contrast, has maintained a happy tedium.
More specifically, Canada has been much stricter about limiting banks’ leverage, the extent to which they can rely on borrowed funds. It has also limited the process of securitization, in which banks package and resell claims on their loans outstanding — a process that was supposed to help banks reduce their risk by spreading it, but has turned out in practice to be a way for banks to make ever-bigger wagers with other people’s money.
There’s no question that in recent years these restrictions meant fewer opportunities for bankers to come up with clever ideas than would have been available if Canada had emulated America’s deregulatory zeal. But that, it turns out, was all to the good.”
Will the U.S. follow suit or remain on the flashier side of the headlines?
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