Sin and the City
Twenty three years ago, the City was excitedly awaiting the Big Bang – the moment which would usher in a new era of self-regulation of the financial services industry. I had a grandstand view of the impending arrival. The legislation to prepare for the Big Bang was called the Financial Services Bill, and I spent several intense weeks leading for the Opposition as the Bill was taken through its Standing Committee stage.
Mrs Thatcher’s government, in line with its free-market philosophy, was very clear that the City could in essence be trusted to regulate itself. They resisted all attempts to give the regulators some teeth. The next few years of what some called self-regulation but which was in reality a free-for-all saw a huge expansion in financial services, in the size of the institutions providing them, in the sums of money involved, and in the rewards “earned” by those who worked in the City.
For those of us who argued at the time that the “free” market was not infallible, and (in line with Keynes, who had warned that financial markets were peculiarly prone to excess) that the City would require substantial regulation, subsequent events have come as no surprise. Even we, however, could not have foreseen the size of the money-go-round, spinning ever faster, that produced outrageous fortunes for a few and, eventually, crash and ruin for many.
Nor could we imagine that it would be a New Labour government that would become the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the new lords of the universe. So dazzled were Ministers by the riches generated in the City that they did not think to enquire as to how many of those they claimed to represent actually benefited from the new wealth – wealth largely gouged out of the pockets of the rest of us.
The current revulsion at City excesses – the inflated bonuses, commissions, salaries and perks – is understandable; so, too, the anger at the growing evidence that nothing has changed and that those responsible for the mess will be paid mega-bucks for (allegedly) cleaning it up.
But the reaction to the greed and irresponsibility of the financial free-for-all, while natural, is a diversion from the real point. The reason for the government’s continuing genuflection to the City is that, after 23 years of unregulated City operations, and a growing reliance on financial services to keep the economy moving forward, the collapse of the City means that there is nothing much left.
The game is given away in the Chancellor’s statement this week on his plans for future regulation of financial services. His constant references to the importance of the City to our economy should be seen, not as an endorsement of the course followed over the last 23 years, but as a confession of failure. It is an admission of how far governmental indulgence of City excesses has distorted our economy and how big has been the price that the rest of us have had to pay for the rewards that City operators have milked from that same economy.
The real damage suffered as a consequence of the City’s domination of our economy is not to be measured, in other words, only in terms of the current crash and financial meltdown. The weight given to the City’s interests over a long period has seriously distorted our economic performance – and the more successful the City seemed, the more important its earnings to our national accounts, the more other parts of the economy were allowed to wither away.
The problem is not a new one; it was Winston Churchill who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, remarked in 1925, “I would rather see Finance less proud and Industry more content.” An excessive attachment to the interests of those who hold and manipulate existing assets, at the expense of those who want to create new wealth, is – after all – a characteristic of mature economies which have substantial assets to protect – and we have been a mature economy for 150 years.
But the era of self-regulation and the demands of the global market meant that this policy bias became magnified many times over. Economic policy as a whole was tailored over this period to serve the City’s interests – so consistently, and over such a long time, that it was no longer recognised as abnormal. There was, we were assured “no alternative”; the global market meant that if the City were not given free rein, others would muscle in on their territory.
So, monetary policy was given centre stage. The policy itself was handed over to bankers, so that it was no longer subject to scrutiny and Ministers were no longer accountable for it, but so that it could be decided for a limited purpose that – arguably – primarily served the purposes of one part only of the wider economy.
Macro-economic policy was largely abandoned. Keynes was dismissed and forgotten. Interest rates were pressed into service to maintain the value of the currency and to underpin financial assets that might otherwise have been regarded as of dubious value. Little or no attention was paid to the competitiveness of the rest of the British economy, so that any thought of following an exchange rate policy that would stimulate exports, employment and investment simply never occurred to our policy-makers; manufacturing in particular was allowed to continue its relentless decline. Most of our economic eggs were placed in the financial services basket and only City operators had access to the golden eggs amongst them.
That is why the global crisis has hit the United Kingdom harder than anywhere else. The financial meltdown has meant that we have nothing much else to fall back on. And that is why the government has gone back – cap in hand – to the authors of the great misfortune, to ask them to dig us out of the hole. There is no better hole to find.
Millions will pay the price of the financial collapse with their jobs, homes and taxes. But many more – and over a much longer period – will suffer in ways that they do not even recognise as a result of the policy priority given to City fat cats whose primary focus remains their own privilege rather than the British economy. Whether through indifference or cowardice, our politicians seem intent on perpetuating a 23 year-old error.
Bryan Gould
6 July 2009
This article was published in the online Guardian on 9 July
Lessons from the Crisis
As the global crisis unfolds, the great gurus of the world economy – those who have presided over its fortunes for much of the last two or three decades – have largely ducked for cover. Some – like Alan Greenspan – have had the courage to admit that there was a “flaw” in his thinking. Others – like Gordon Brown – have made an apparently effortless overnight conversion to Keynesian economics after decades of monetarist orthodoxy. A few – like Bernard Madoff – have been unmasked as fraudulent, as well as foolishly irresponsible. But most have watched from the sidelines, silent and confused, as the results of their handiwork have become apparent.
The immediate task and focus of governments around the world is, of course, to put in place measures which will limit the damage, avoid a depression, and restore the world economy to some semblance of health as soon as possible. In this endeavour, the supposed experts of yesterday necessarily have little to say. It is, after all, their nostrums that have driven us to this point, and the crisis has cruelly exposed the limitations of the monetary policy which they said was all that was needed. What does liquidity matter if no one wants to borrow and spend?
But, once the authorities have done their best, and the course to recovery of a sort is (hopefully) set, the debate will move on. The issue then will be not so much the steps needed for recovery as the lessons to be learned if the disaster is not to be repeated in the future.
At that point, we can expect the champions of “free” markets to re-enter the debate. The battle will then be on to write (or re-write) history, and what now seems undeniable will again become hotly contested. There will be no shortage of explanations and excuses for what has happened, ranging from the nonchalant (the crisis was a minor blip in what has otherwise been a triumph for the “free” market) to the aggressively ideological (it was the failures and mistake of governments that frustrated and distorted legitimate market operations).
It is vital, therefore, that – while reality still imposes itself on perceptions – an account is drawn up of the lessons we must learn from this disastrous episode. Some of those lessons will be widely accepted, but others – even for those who are most critical of the errors of recent times – will be more difficult to digest.
The crisis has been so damaging and so all-engulfing that it might be argued that virtually nothing of past doctrine can survive. There are some particular lessons, however, that absolutely demand attention. I would select six leading contenders.
The first and most obvious is that “free” or unregulated markets are extremely dangerous mechanisms which inevitably go wrong. All markets, left unregulated, will produce extremes, and that is particularly true, as Keynes pointed out, of financial markets, because of their inherent instability. The case for regulation cannot be disputed, but even so, the counter-attack will certainly come. The merits of self-regulation, the salutary effects of competition, and the advantages of a “light hand” will again be rolled out in order to deflect any real attempt at disciplining market operators. That is when our public authorities must be strong-minded, and remind themselves that is their responsibility to the public interest that demands effective regulation.
The second lesson is that government involvement in the management of the economy is essential. After decades of being told that the only thing we should ask of government is that it “get off our backs”, we can now see that it is governments – not banks or the private sector – that, as the authority of last resort, maintain the value of the currency, guarantee appropriate levels of liquidity and credit, and make irreplaceable investments in essential infrastructure. We must not wait again until the eleventh hour before we deploy the power, responsibility and legitimacy of government to keep the economy on the right track.
The third lesson is that fiscal policy, decided by governments, is more important and effective than monetary policy. We have again been told for decades that monetary policy is all that is necessary, and indeed all that is effective, both in controlling inflation and in setting the real economy on a sustainable course. We now know that using monetary policy to ward off recession is no more effective than pushing on a piece of string and that an exclusive reliance on monetary policy to restrain inflation is just another reflection of the view – now surely discredited – that the markets always get it right.
My fourth inescapable lesson is that gross imbalances in the world economy will inevitably cause it to topple off the high wire. The growing gap between rich and poor nations is bad enough, from both an economic and moral viewpoint. But the imbalance between surplus and deficit countries is equally damaging as a strictly economic phenomenon. The surpluses drive us toward recession because they represent resources that are hoarded rather than spent, while those countries with deficits are likely, as Keynes pointed out, to try to control them through deflating their economies, thereby reinforcing the deflationary bias. To the extent that others are willing to finance the deficits (as, for example, China’s financing of the US deficit), this simply encourages uneconomic production and an excessive reliance on credit, meaning that the world economy wobbles perilously on an unsustainable foundation.
A related and fifth lesson is that the freedom to move capital at will around the world has exacted a heavy price. The total removal of exchange controls meant that international investors could ignore and, if necessary, blackmail national governments; this became a major factor in allowing market operators to escape and defy any attempt at regulatory controls. We have to make up our minds whether we trust accountable governments, with all their imperfections, or the unrestrained and totally irresponsible market. Our recent experience surely makes this a no-brainer. What we now need is a new international regime, negotiated between governments, to regulate exchange rate volatility, international lending practices, and the obligations of international investors.
My final lesson is that bankers should not be trusted with the most important decisions in economic policy. No policy measure was more widely welcomed than the handing of monetary policy over to “independent” central banks. We now have good reason to know that their decisions are not only likely to be wrong, but will certainly be self-serving – no more reliable or impartial than those of casino operators who will always set the odds in their own favour. If we are truly to grapple with the lessons set out above, we need to restore the main decisions of economic policy, including the effective regulation of markets, to democratic control.
Bryan Gould
18 January 2009
This article was published in the online Guardian on 19 January and the New Zealand Herald on 26 January.