Ruling Party Melt-down and the End of the EU project in Ireland | 144 comments (144 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: The Irish Independent comments... (4.00 / 2)

Who, then, was actually in charge of Irish Finance? The civil service within the Ministry? The Mid-level management in the Irish private banks? The staff of the Central Bank?

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 06:09:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

No one! (4.00 / 3)

That's the basic problem. The financial regulator was incompetent. The Irish central bank virtually redundant. (I have an acquaintance who used to be a senior official with the bank and who spent his time skulling pints and attending conferences. There was never any pretence at real work) The quality of senior Irish civil servants is lamentable - they are almost more into "relationship building" rather than hard analysis and decision making than the "populist" politicians themselves...

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 06:16:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 6)

Frank Schnittger:

The Irish central bank virtually redundant. (I have an acquaintance who used to be a senior official with the bank and who spent his time skulling pints and attending conferences. There was never any pretence at real work)

I was re-reading this yesterday

A credit crunch and liquidity squeeze is instead the time for central banks to get their hands dirty and take socially necessary risks which are not part and parcel of the art of central banking during normal times when markets are orderly. Making monetary policy under conditions of orderly markets is really not that hard. Any group of people with IQs in three digits (individually) and familiar with (almost) any intermediate macroeconomics textbook could do the job. Dealing with a liquidity crisis and credit crunch is hard. Inevitably, it exposes the central bank to significant financial and reputational risk. The central banks will be asked to take credit risk (of unknown) magnitude onto their balance sheets and they will have to make explicit judgments about the creditworthiness of various counterparties. But without taking these risks the central banks will be financially and reputationally safe, but poor servants of the public interest.

and I got to thinking: if during good times being in certain positions of responsibility is an unchallenging job, how do you ensure that people with the necessary skills and resolve (not necessarily individually, but certainly collectively) are where they need to be in a time of crisis?

A military analogy would be, how do you maintain combat-readiness in your defence forces after two generations of peace? And if you don't, who do you turn to when the unthinkable happens and you're invaded?

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 06:23:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 4)

A lot of people got into serious money or positions of responsibility on the back of the Celtic Tiger and none of them had any interest in rocking the boat or questioning the possibility that their own "success" was due to anything other than their own personal brilliance and judgement. People who asked awkward questions or posed a risk to those engaged in career building typically got nowhere and were marginalised or sidelined. It happens in private business as well of course, but at least here the empire building and profit maximising objective of the organisation is explicit. What got to me was the vacuous moralising of incompetents in senior positions who claimed to be acting from high principle...

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 06:38:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 0)

What is Patrick Honohan's story?

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 06:51:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

The Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland used to be a sinecure for a retiring Secretary General of the Department of Finance... Patrick was the first "external" appointee and certainly has relevant academic and work experience.

Patrick Honohan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Before pursuing postgraduate research, Honohan took a position with the International Monetary Fund in 1971. While completing his PhD in London, he joined the economics staff of the Central Bank of Ireland. During the 1980s, he was Economic Advisor to Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald and subsequently began working with the World Bank. Honohan then spent seven years as a Research Professor with the Economic and Social Research Institute before returning to the World Bank in 1998 as a Lead Economist and subsequently Senior Advisor on financial sector policy.
The author of numerous academic papers and monographs,^[3] he has taught economics at the LSE, University of California, San Diego, the Australian National University and University College Dublin. He was appointed Professor of International Financial Economics and Development in 2007 at Trinity College Dublin.
In September 2009, Honohan was appointed as the tenth governor of the Central Bank of Ireland.
The following December he said in a speech that "ignorance and inattention" by staff at the Financial Regulator were to blame for regulatory failure.

As far as I know he is a respected if mainstream economist known for his blunt talking. However he appears to have avoided criticism the Central Bank in the above quote and I am unclear what remaining functions (not carried out by the financial regulator or the ECB) continue to justify such a large staff at the Central bank in their preposterous Head office in central Dublin (which was originally built in breach of Planning permission and had to be lowered to become more compliant...an appropriate metaphor for how it conducted itself in other ways...)

Not being an economist I won't comment on the ideological orientation or significance of his research work.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 07:25:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

I found that you mentioned his report in June: The Irish Disease

The Irish crash was a peculiarly Irish creation after all.

Oh, well, nothing particularly Irish about that, Iceland had the same problems... And so did bigger countries, it's just that bigger countries are TBTF...

Reports blame domestic factors for banking crisis
...
The Government's budgets during the boom years "contributed significantly to the economic overheating", Dr Honohan said, as they relied to an "unsustainable extent" on the construction sector and encouraged the property boom through tax breaks.
"This helped create a climate of public opinion which was led to believe that the party could last forever," he said.
Dr Honohan found that the Financial Regulator was "excessively deferential and accommodating" to the banks, while the Central Bank, led by his predecessor John Hurley, had not been alert to warnings signs of an imminent crash.
There was insufficient awareness or willingness to accept "how close the system was to the edge" and that it was the responsibility of the Central Bank and the regulator to pull it back from the edge, he said.
"Rocking the boat and swimming against the tide of public opinion would have required a particularly strong sense of the independent role of a central bank in being prepared to `spoil the party' and withstand possible strong adverse public reaction," Dr Honohan said.
Pat Neary, the former chief executive of the regulator, said he had no comment. Mr Neary's predecessor, Liam O'Reilly, and Mr Hurley could not be reached for comment.
Dr Honohan said there was "a comprehensive failure of bank management" to maintain "safe and sound banking practices".
The weakness of the Irish banks was not caused by the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008 but by an over-exposure to property driven by excessive overseas borrowing "to support a creditfuelled property market and construction frenzy".
Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society were "well on the road towards insolvency" at that stage, he said, while the two biggest banks, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, could only have survived without a State bailout if the international financial markets had calmed.
The scale of the Government guarantee raised the cost of the bailout to the State, narrowing options available to fix failing institutions, he said.
...
So obviously the Government will now resign in the wake of such a damning indictment?

I take it that they didn't...

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 08:54:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Resigning is not part of mainstream Irish political culture - particularly in FF - where almost nothing a Minister can do wrong is deemed sufficient to warrant a resignation - or at least until such time as a great retirement package beckons...

I googled "Irish ministerial resignations for wrongdoing" and came up with nothing, so we must be clean...

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 09:04:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

how do you ensure that people with the necessary skills and resolve (not necessarily individually, but certainly collectively) are where they need to be in a time of crisis?

Perhaps what is needed in times of crisis is a mechanism to bring in additional expertise from business and academia and international bodies, explicitly including non-mainstream views, and give them a mandate to jointly hash out the options and consequences with top political leaders, with all deliberations recorded and to be published within one year.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 09:24:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Public recordings - not just minutes, but actual video and audio - of all significant ministerial and financial meetings would go a long way to restoring real accountability.

Meanwhile, if you want to avoid disaster, you have to build a system with feedback loops that make disaster less likely.

Promoting idiots who are out of their depth but are "a safe pair of hands" and "won't rock the boat" is a good way not to do that.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 09:33:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 4)

ThatBritGuy:

Public recordings - not just minutes, but actual video and audio - of all significant ministerial and financial meetings would go a long way to restoring real accountability.

Do you really think it would work, even if desirable (I don't think it is)? Don't you think that, the minute after they start recording these meetings, participant will stop saying anything significant and shift to backroom deals for the real stuff and decision-making? Unless you implant microphones and micro-cameras on all the politicians and civil servants (and CEOs while we are at it), you won't be able to monitor them properly...

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet

by Melanchthon on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:22:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 0)

Yes, I really think it would work.

All discussions, all personal, departmental, and relevant corporate financial records, all decisions and positions should be public.

Backroom deals should be banned.

What would be the problem with this?

Of course everyone would be nervous with the public looking over their shoulder. But that's exactly the point.

Pols with something to hide would naturally excuse themselves from power and surveillance - which doesn't seem like a loss to me.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:51:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Backroom deals should be banned.

It's nice to see you still hold on some idealism.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:01:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

ThatBritGuy:

All discussions, all personal, departmental, and relevant corporate financial records, all decisions and positions should be public.
Backroom deals should be banned.

And how would you enforce this? It would require a lot of people dedicated to watching these politicians/civil servants/decision-makers and a lot of sophisticated equipment to monitor them all the time. Oh, and at what level would you start?

And saying that a measure only harms those who "have something to hide" is an old authoritarian argument...

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet

by Melanchthon on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:06:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

If a cabinet meeting decides X, but Y becomes policy instead then it's not hard to see that something has gone astray somewhere.

There's already plenty of discussion and debate about policy and politicians. It wouldn't need a Separate Public Oversight Committee with people in scary robes and fascist black leather - debate would happen naturally, just as it does already, but more so.

Why would that be a bad thing?

As for "having something to hide", the point is that pols notoriously do have things to hide - many, many things, which they would rather the public never found out about. The things they hide suck out democracy and public involvement from politics like the legislative equivalent of a black hole.

Do you think the FOIA legislation is authoritarian too? Or Finland's public financial disclosure laws? Is Wikileaks authoritarian for making diplomatic cables public?

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:19:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

ThatBritGuy:

If a cabinet meeting decides X, but Y becomes policy instead then it's not hard to see that something has gone astray somewhere.

But, usually, backroom deals take place before meetings where decisions are made. So there would be no discrepancy between a decision made during the meeting and the policy implemented...

I am all in favour of FOIA, but you must notice that there is a period of time during which you cannot access the information/data. And Finland's law is limited to a certain type of information, whereas you would like to make public in real time "all the discussions and meetings".

What I am saying is this would require a STASI-like organisation. And who would monitor this organisation? How long would it take before this organisation become the real power?

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet

by Melanchthon on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:42:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Why would it require any organisation at all?

You set up live feeds, and you put the media recordings up on a server. The public and the press can do the rest.

I'll say again - there is no Bureau of Transgression in this idea. It's purely to put policy debate on the record.

As for backroom deals - a meeting that rubber stamps a decision without debating it is just as suspicious as a meeting which doesn't lead to consistent policy.

Financial records provide a literal paper trail for anyone who wants to check who benefits from decisions.

I don't understand why there's a problem with any of this. Parliamentary debates are already televised in the UK, Hansard keeps a record of all parliamentary statements in paper form, and MPs are supposed to make their expense claims and business connections public.

This is just extending the same established principle to other government contexts.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 01:25:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Parliamentary debates are theatre for the entertainment of policy wonks. And occasionally - very, very occasionally - a public arena for the execution of a particularly ~~criminal~~ indiscreet politician.

Like the meetings of the general assembly of shareholders in a large industrial corporation.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 02:18:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

What I am saying is this would require a STASI-like organisation. And who would monitor this organisation?

Make it the law that acceptance of governmental employment constitutes permission to have your activities recorded by sound and video, and, except as specifically excluded, it is legal to make any of these recordings public. Make the legal presumption in favor of release of recordings and make claims to the contrary continuously subject to judicial review, with both the party that made the recording and the party that was recorded entitled to bring claims to a judge of their choice.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 05:20:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Ugh. This would make government unworkable. It would also be a huge invasion of privacy for both politicians and civil servants (the Wikileaks cables come mostly from mid-level civil servants). Nobody could function this way. Imagine this for a private company and the implications for their ability to work together and interact with other companies. And that's the problem I have with Cablegate - it's the sheer banality of it all that makes it hard to justify. The vast majority of the stuff I've read is routine government communication of the sort I want foreign service officers to engage in. The difficulties it causes America are mostly of the personal embarrassment kind, and the fear of actually doing their jobs properly.

by MarekNYC on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:17:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 5)

Dude - you have a country which is running around the planet blowing people up at random, torturing them, giving vast hand-outs to mil-ind thugs, which is riddled with insider corruption, is starving its citizens and depriving them of income in the run up to the Christmas season, which has officially sanctioned random wiretaps without serious cause, and has taken to sexually abusing anyone who steps on a plane...

And you're complaining my suggestion would make government unworkable?

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:22:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Yup. It also does a lot of the stuff a government needs to do. And unlike you, I don't see the US as particularly bad except that its huge power allows for a greater scale of abusive behaviour.

by MarekNYC on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:30:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

You seem to have much lower expectations of sane, functional government than I do.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:35:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

You seem to have much ~~more realistic~~ lower expectations of sane, functional government than I do.

by MarekNYC on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:39:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

I, for one, welcome our new federal dick-measuring overlords.... ;)

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 08:41:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

I thought you wrote 'click-measuring'...oh, but wait a mo....

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 09:11:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Can't remember who first started calling the new TSA machines "The Federal Dick-Measuring Device," but I'm sticking with that.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 09:15:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 4)

I beg to differ. Those cables contain a lot of names of European collaborators, who can now be hung out to dry in public. Of course developing Quislings is proper on-the-ground foreign policy for any diplomatic corps. I'd be downright disappointed if our own diplomats behaved any differently. But as a European, I'd still like to know when other people do it to us.

In particular, I learned something about the European secret police: They are either blind, dumb and deaf-mute for not already having those cables in their archives (with three million people having access to them, any serious intelligence agency should be able to get a data dump now and then); or that they are completely on board with politicians collaborating with the Americans. Considering how much time they spent chasing DFHs suspected of taking funding from the KGB, this reveals something of a double standard (either between the treatment of spies from different countries, or between hippies and politicians being spies).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:30:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

El Pais is having a field day today exposing the entire PP leadership as quislings...

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:36:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Pols with something to hide would naturally excuse themselves from power and surveillance - which doesn't seem like a loss to me.

So anyone who isn't completely dull in their private life would opt out?

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:43:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 0)

I'm not suggesting 24 hour surveillance with headcams.

But people who can't keep it zipped tend to come to a sticky end in politics anyway - it just takes the press longer to catch on, once they make a few enemies who can afford private detectives.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 01:16:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

How do you prevent people meeting after hours to hash out an agreement which then they go through the kabuki of putting together "properly" when on the job, including the preparatory meetings for a summit?

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 04:20:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Backroom deals can only be banned ... (4.00 / 3)

... by banning all contacts between members of any committee when they are out of sight of cameras and out of pickup range of microphones.

If the only place they are allowed privacy is the restroom, that's where the backroom deals will be made.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun Dec 5th, 2010 at 12:22:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Backroom deals can only be banned ... (4.00 / 2)

It is not possible to prevent the meetings and the conversations, but it is possible to legalize unannounced recording of conversations with any legislator or bureaucrat and the public release of same. This would serve to limit the damage of such dealings by, in effect, potentially making all conversations "on the record". This would provide a significant incentive for people to develop means of bargaining and negotiating that could withstand public scrutiny.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Dec 5th, 2010 at 01:22:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

It also provides a substantial incentive ... (4.00 / 4)

... to restrict backroom deals to long time members of the club, excluding newcomers from the real bargaining because of the risk that they will reveal the sordid details.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun Dec 5th, 2010 at 01:39:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It also provides a substantial incentive ... (4.00 / 2)

Which would, in time, cause the club to atrophy and die. This is a problem if you see the existing system as producing valuable leadership and direction for the society. I don't.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Dec 5th, 2010 at 04:19:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It also provides a substantial incentive ... (4.00 / 3)

My problem is in the damage done before "ultimately" happens.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun Dec 5th, 2010 at 04:26:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 0)

Can't force a political elite to be honest if they don't want to be.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:54:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 0)

So, what is needed in a crisis is the old Roman institution of the Dictator?

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 09:38:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Only in the sense that it would be a function that would only be invoked in extraordinary circumstances, and I haven't proposed mechanisms by which it might be invoked. My proposal was intended to insure that the full available range of options and analysis was brought to bear and was seriously considered. The enforcement mechanism was the release of recordings of the procedure at a later date, which would limit the "who coulda knowed" and "TINA" defenses at the cost of reputations and, possibily, legal liabilities for breach of fiduciary responsibility, if the members were properly sworn.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 10:41:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

The problem with emergency expert cabinets is that they have to be selected. And the selection pressure will be against dissenting views, because everybody who is going to be doing the selecting is going to be from the old guard that was appointed when times were good and the position was a sinecure. Or even worse, they might realise that they are incompetent, and call in the respected experts - the IMF and ECB. shudder

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:24:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

There is, I think, a more general point. Bureaucracies are great at handling the Routine and minor variations of same. They can become seriously dysfunctional when trying to cope with extraordinary circumstances. There should be no shame attached to admitting that a problem has gotten bigger than you can handle and that you need to call in experts who have a successful track-record of handling similar problems in other areas.

The problem then becomes one of identifying the most appropriate experts, and unfortunately in this case the establishment experts have all become thoroughly neo-liberalised in recent times. But that is also a bigger political problem - the decline of social democracy and Keynesian economics throughout "the West".

It seems that the CW is that to compete against China you have to become more like the Chinese... Remarkably that is not my experience of strategic thinking in big business - but it seems to have become the orthodoxy for Governments and academia.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:36:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Have you noticed that institutions with dictatorial power meant to be invoked in extraordinary circumstances tend to stay, if only by pretending these extraordinary circumstances still exist (like, say, war on terror...)?

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet

by Melanchthon on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:27:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Yes, I have noticed that and am aware of the problems Jake references also. Both would have to be addressed in some way, or we could just continue as we are. A fine choice!

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:36:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Or they reinvent themselves - like NATO and Iran? Fortunately, if you can hang around long enough an appropriate bogeyman will come along to justify your continued existence...

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:41:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Not really, ARGeezer's proposal is for a special kind of inquiry, laying out the options, and if I understand it laying out as many options as possible. That is quite a bit from a dictator (roman or otherwise).

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 02:20:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

and I got to thinking: if during good times being in certain positions of responsibility is an unchallenging job, how do you ensure that people with the necessary skills and resolve (not necessarily individually, but certainly collectively) are where they need to be in a time of crisis?
A military analogy would be, how do you maintain combat-readiness in your defence forces after two generations of peace? And if you don't, who do you turn to when the unthinkable happens and you're invaded?

The military does it with drills and war games, and I could well imagine that this might work for a central bank/financial regulator as well. Every quarter, the ministry of finance would make a scenario in which a Charlie Foxtrot of random severity occurs, ranging from the insolvency of a small bank all the way through to systemic insolvency coupled with a run on the currency.

For maximum effect, you'd spring it on the financial regulator on a random day in the quarter, and the financial regulator would game out the scenario. The disadvantage of that approach is that, unlike the military in peacetime, the financial regulator has a day job. So running unscheduled exercises is going to be a real pain in the ass. It may be more sustainable to pick a long weekend (i.e. a weekend where Friday or Monday is also a bank holiday) somewhere in each quarter and hold the exercise then. Or simply cook up an exercise for each long weekend in the year.

If they pass an exercise, its weigh in the random draw is reduced, so the exercise schedule becomes biased towards the sorts of exercises they need to get better at.

The big problem is, of course, that you'd have to get someone to design realistic scenarios - and since nobody among Die Seriöse Leute predicted this Charlie Foxtrot in advance...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:39:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

But didn't all those monster econometric models run on monster computers predict the crisis and provide all the options for sorting it (and measuring the success of alternate strategies) enabling a perfect optimisation of the required solution?

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:47:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

No.

Neo-Classical Economics cannot predict Bubbles will happen much less what to do when they do.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:58:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

I forgot the ;-)

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 01:02:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Sorry, my snark detector is in the shop.

:-)

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 01:09:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Commas are free - you don't have to spare, them ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 01:13:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

That might be of more use were they using models that actually gave time dependent outcomes that were similar to real world developments, such as those being developed by Steve Keen.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 11:50:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

I'm not talking about modelling. I'm talking about going through the motions of taking, say, Deutche Bank into receivership, divvying up its assets into good and bad, and shafting the unsecured creditors. Y'know, doing their job. Or working out a plan for how to deal with a Soros attack ahead of time, even if you believe that it can't happen in the real world.

I don't expect the military to be able to accurately predict whether the Russians will invade or not, but I do expect the military to have run enough exercises to convince themselves that they know how to hurt the Russians if they did decide to invade, for whatever obscure reason. Hell, the military has scenarios for fighting a nuclear war, which is probably about the most pointless sort of war game you can imagine - if people start lobbing around megatons, you lose. Even if you win.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 12:21:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Those things certainly would help. An FDR type audit of all the banks -- for real -- not a bunch of phony stress test PR exercises. But still, being able to accurately model even the shape of the curve for various economic parameters that would result from various actions would be helpful. Even with three sector dynamic models Steve acheives that. Calibrating the response will take longer. Especially if he is the only one doing it.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 01:52:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

Lots of things might be helpful. But the response to a currency run or an intervention against a TBTF bank is something you can drill even if your macroeconomic models are shit. You can simply download a bank's balance sheet and declare this or that asset class to be so-and-so much impaired (or, if you want an extra layer of realism, only give this information to the referee, and have people figure it out on their own from trying to "sell" the assets to the referee).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 02:26:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

And as an aside... (4.00 / 2)

... I don't want the central bank or financial regulator to be doing macroeconomic modelling. I want them to kill financial bubbles, I want them to kill aggressive accounting in the financial sector, I want them to make sure that depositors' money isn't used for gambling and I want them to take insolvent banks through bankruptcy.

Macroeconomic modelling is the Treasury's job. The CB and FR do not need macroeconomic models to do the jobs I want them to do, and if they feel the need for the results of macroeconomic modelling, they can ask the Treasury to do a run for them. Macroeconomic policy is properly the Treasury's turf, and I don't want the CB and FR developing a parallel capability in that area. That would almost inevitably lead lead to a sort of mission creep that I consider harmful in an institution that is traditionally not particularly democratically accountable.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 02:39:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And as an aside... (none / 1)

OK then, let the treasury use models that actually work.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 02:56:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And as an aside... (4.00 / 3)

You know I'm with you on that.

But good macro is preventative more than it is curative. What I'm talking about here is crisis management, and you don't need good macro models for that - all you need is a firm political will to screw over bondholders and use the power of the sovereign to restore full employment. After you've arrested the rise in unemployment, you can start firing up your macro models to develop medium-term policies.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:06:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And as an aside... (4.00 / 3)

To my knowledge, current as of 2007, the relation between macroeconomic models and policies and their determinative affect on microeconomic activity has never been proven. All papers demonstrating such are ex post facto.

If there IS a paper I'd be eager to read it.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:05:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And as an aside... (4.00 / 3)

Damn it all.

I meant an NCE paper.

There are UnSerious People who have written such.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:11:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And as an aside... (none / 1)

I don't want the central bank or financial regulator to be doing macroeconomic modelling.

In the case of Ireland and Greece, were capable macro modeling of the sort I suggested performed on the "resolutions" imposed by the ECB and IMF in those cases, it would be clear what an ineffectual disaster the policies would be and that the chief result will be gratuitous damage to the societies involved via a debt-deflation death spiral. Use of such models would only strengthen the hand of the IMF, who, interestingly, seems to have been the voice of moderation in these cases, not having banks for which it is directly responsible which might take a haircut on bonds they hold.

One of the advantages of having useless theories and models is that it facilitates an Alice in Wonderland situation in which everything means exactly what the relevant authority says it means.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 12:41:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And as an aside... (4.00 / 2)

But I don't want central banks to recommend structural adjustment programmes and fiscal austerity. That's none of their business. They're there to kill insolvent banks and print money for the government. That's all I want them to do. The fact that the ECB is the entity with the greatest influence on federal-level EU macroeconomic planning is a disgrace and a perversion of the proper way to run an industrial state.

The IMF is a different sort of story - they should be doing macro, and they should be doing it right. (But they should never have been involved in an internal €-zone crisis in the first place...)

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 01:32:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And as an aside... (4.00 / 2)

And I wholly agree with this. We need a reassertion of the political in political economy. But, given the existing presumptions, economics has to be governed entirely by its own internal rules -- no matter that this is bunk, has never an will never really work -- at least for the good of the overall society. Supposedly autonomous economics HAS been a very effective smoke screen for the looting of societies, however.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 05:06:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

You make the training as close to the real thing as you can. Grueling training exercises, live fire with heavy artillery over your heads as you advance, and so on.

What the central bank equivalence of this would be, I do not know.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 02:44:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Pretend that you are a small, open economy somewhere in South-East Asia in 1997.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:08:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Since the small southeast Asian economies collapsed in 1997 I assume this is snark & having been bit once, already today, I refuse to play.

:-)

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:20:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

(Note: SE Asia was rescued by massive injection of outside capital flows. Indonesian companies were picked-up for as low as 10 cents on the dollar -- IIRC.)

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:22:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

It's not.

Starvid wanted an example of a live-fire exercise. Simulating the reaction to a 1997 SE Asia style collapse would be an excellent exercise for a central banker.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:38:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Now we have the 2007-present crisis to play with, too...

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 04:27:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

And that is one advantage of running exercises: Even if your macro models are garbage, and your economics profession is empirically bankrupt, you can still push for an upgrade of the exercise scenarios whenever an economy or two blows up in a sufficiently spectacular fashion somewhere in the world. "Nobody could have predicted that this would happen (to white people)" is a weaksauce excuse when you're drilling four "unthinkable" scenarios every year.

It also provides a more graceful out for the people who didn't see the crash coming. Rather than having to discard their entire academic career because it's garbage, they can say "well, I sure didn't see that coming, but let's update out scenarios to make sure we'll be ready to deal with it next time." While not as viscerally satisfying as purging the morons, it would go a long way towards improving the financial regulator's combat readiness.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 10:58:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Except, when they conducted the banking stress tests earlier this year they still managed to not stress too much in directions that they knew were problematic...

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 11:20:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 0)

Ah yes, but that would only undermine CONFIDENCE, and whatever else, we mustn't stress the investors...

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 11:27:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 3)

You know, I would like to see Zapatero employ on the financial sector the tactics he deployed against the air traffic controllers today...

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 02:50:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Well, yeah, that's why you need to drill people ahead of time. So they don't make that sort of newbie mistakes next time.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 12:23:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 5)

In either the case of the US or European Stress Tests, calling the methodology employed "a rookie mistake" is being generous in your assumptions about the intent and probably overly harsh in your assumptions about their competence. I see little evidence that, in either case, the intent was to test a reasonable worst case situation, but rather to insure that all but the most laughable cases got a pass, and there was a struggle about even the laughable cases, such as Hypo bank.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 12:53:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 0)

hey econo-wonkers, here's a dumb question from the bleachers:

what is the equivalent of Wall St. in the EU?

are there parallels with the ECB?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Dec 7th, 2010 at 05:28:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

"The City" - now being challenged by Frankfurt

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue Dec 7th, 2010 at 06:19:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Alternatively, you can engage your troops in small-scale conflicts far from your country (say, Afghanistan)....

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." - Jean Monnet

by Melanchthon on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 03:20:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

No, that gives you the wrong skills. COIN is a completely different game than conventional war. Just ask Georgia...

(even if you obviously will learn some good things)

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 05:06:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (4.00 / 2)

Yeah, but they're not doing COIN in Afghanistan...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 3rd, 2010 at 05:09:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No one! (none / 1)

Since McCrystal/Obama, they are.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sat Dec 4th, 2010 at 07:04:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]