Sunday, October 19, 2008

In hindsight the bankers behaved rationally!

The September issue of Euromoney we Georges Pauget of the Crédit Agricole saying “Now if you go back over the decisions that were taken, and the context within which they were taken I have to say that, even with the benefit of hindsight they appear rational. We took triple-A-rated assets, reinsured with triple-A-guarantors and concluded that they carried zero risk”

And I ask:

Q. Who gave those triple-A-ratings? A. The credit rating agencies.

Q. Who empowered the credit rating agencies to have so much influence? A. The banking regulators of Basel.

Do we now want to really change things or do we just want to dig ourselves deeper in the hole of the over-trusting-some risk-information-oligopolies that we’re in?