Financial regulation never too much for sound global economy

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-03-24 12:30

People have been worried about financial regulation, in one sense or another, ever since the US subprime mortgage crisis broke out in the summer of 2007 and hence roiled global financial markets and derailed the world economy.

Some are worried that too much regulation would do damage to the markets, but many more, who blamed lax regulation for the outbreak of the crisis in the first place, have long called for a strengthened global regulatory framework, which they hope will forestall possible crises in the future.

For those market fundamentalists who believe the market can itself correct whatever mistakes it makes, they get it very wrong this time again.

One of the many root causes of the current global financial crisis originated from the deregulation process that started in the early 1980s.

As some Western countries, especially the United States, relaxed financial regulation in the past 20 years or so, all kinds of increasingly opaque and complex investment products, including the now notorious toxic assets based on the subprime mortgages, have been flooding financial markets in the name of financial innovation.

Once again, the market proved vulnerable to a situation leading to a suicidal path without efficient regulation.

The problem is, when Wall Street blows investment bubbles to an absurd and even suicidal degree, Main Street around the world faces the subsequent bitter process of bubble bursting.

For those worried about too much financial regulation, they should really hear what former US Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman said in September 2008 when the US subprime mortgage crisis escalated into a full blown global financial crisis after several big US investment banks were forced to file for bankruptcy protection or merge with others.

Altman characterized the financial crisis as the "greatest regulatory failure in modern history."

Patrik Etschmayer, a Swiss expert on international economics, was more poignant. He wrote in the March 31 edition of The Telegraph in UK:

"Legal regulation seems the only way to rein in the apparently boundless greed, because bankers, speculators, hedge-fund managers and other stock market players large and small, and not only in the US, seem to have lost the capacity to distinguish between freedom and foolishness."

The title of the article, America's Financial Crisis: It's Time to 'De-Deregulate,' was just as revealing as its content.

Strengthening financial regulation has been regarded by many as part of the process of rebuilding the post crisis global financial system.

The process, like many other international reforms, should take into account the interests of emerging and developing countries that have been hit again and again in past financial crises.

From the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998 to the current finance mess torturing many Eastern European emerging economies, from the investment funds driving up the price of crude oil to speculative money exacerbating the food crisis, emerging and developing countries have repeatedly found themselves victimized in rounds of disorderly flow of international capital.

For any effort to strengthen financial regulation, it would just be another round of empty talks if it failed to accommodate the dire need for financial and economic security of emerging countries.

Both the United States and the European Union have unveiled principles for strengthening financial regulation.

Those principles, though good for a start, are also conspicuous for failing to address many needs of emerging and developing countries.

They have called for enhanced monitoring of cross border capital flows, increased transparency of financial markets and products, the establishment of a truly global early warning system for detecting risks accumulated in the financial sector, especially the financial industries in major financial centers in Western countries, and strengthened international monitoring of the macroeconomic policies of countries printing major world reserve currencies.

Essentially, a strengthened global financial regulatory framework is the best weapon to detect and defuse possible financial crises in the future.

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