Reply #85: GACK: larry summers has had enough of financial regulation

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http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/04/13/larry-summers-has-had-enough-financial-regulation/

The financial crisis? Regrettable, obviously. But let’s not rush to judgment here. Our financial system, pre-crisis, worked pretty well. Let’s not break it just because there was a crisis.

That’s the message being peddled by Alan Greenspan, predictably, sadly, and hilariously. And now he has a high-profile bedfellow from the other side of the aisle: Larry Summers, who was hanging out in Bretton Woods this weekend. Stephen Gandel summarizes:

One of the other big questions was what, if anything, Summers would have done differently in terms of regulating the banking system. The answer – not much. “I’ve been more cautious than many about constraining financial innovation,” he said, adding that he didn’t believe the financial crisis had its roots in “new-fangled financial instruments” but rather in a simple real estate bubble. Hmmm—tell that to Iceland. One thing Summers said that most of the crowd could agree with is that “anger and dissatisfaction with the financial system doesn’t constitute a policy.”






:mad: