BankThink

No Financial Institutions Are Systemically Important: BankThink

The postmodern regulatory approach to banking relies on the idea of systemically important financial institutions.

The Financial Stability Board defines these creatures as financial institutions whose "disorderly failure, because of their size, complexity and systemic interconnectedness, would cause significant disruption to the wider financial system and economic activity."

The FSB lists a few dozen global systemically important financial institutions. Disagreement in this new postmodern world seems to center on better working definitions of systemically important, questions of process and authority as to who shall make the final determination, and quibbles about specific entities and their designations. Only a few bother to ask whether this entire approach is useful or not. And essentially nobody considers the possibility of complete deregulation of the banking sector, including allowing competing currencies.

Let's take a heterodox tack on this issue and consider the hypothesis that no financial institutions are systemically important.

For the full piece see "No Financial Institutions Are Systemically Important"

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Law and regulation
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