Let's Use 'The Dog and the Frisbee' as Catalyst for Regulatory Debate: BankThink

Andrew Haldane, executive director of financial stability and a member of the Financial Policy Committee of the U.K.'s Bank of England, has done the U.S. a public service with his recent paper presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s 36^th annual summit of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

In "The Dog and the Frisbee," Haldane explores one of the great conundrums facing financial regulators and industry leaders today: Is more, and increasingly complex, regulation better? Is this complexity adding any value or simply creating new risks? Or would a simpler, more "heuristic" approach produce better regulatory outcomes for end-users and the economy?

You don't have to agree with all five of Haldane's major policy initiatives to appreciate his willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom of the current regulatory path of more and more rules of increasing complexity. My major takeaway from his provocative paper is that we ought to be having this same debate at the same high intellectual level here today. We are not, but this is understandable given where we are in our current election cycle: Both the generalized Democratic mantra that the Dodd-Frank Act is inviolable and the Republican mantra to repeal Dodd-Frank are untenable....

For the full BankThink piece see "Let's Use 'The Dog and the Frisbee' as Catalyst for Regulatory Debate"