By Martin Wolf
When will the next financial crisis come? We do not know. Yet of one thing we can be sure: unless we learn from this crisis, another one will put the world economy back on to the rocks in the not too distant future.
The FT has published a number of contributions on the lessons: Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics and Avinash Persaud of Intelligence Capital offered “a proposal for how to avoid the next crash” (January 31); Francisco González of BBVA discussed “What banks can learn from this credit crisis” (February 4); and Daniel Heller of the Swiss National Bank argued for three ways to reform bank bonuses (February 4). The substance of Mr Heller’s argument was similar to a contribution of my own (“Regulators should intervene in bankers’ pay”, January 15), but without the regulatory coercion.
The big question, indeed, is whether lessons must be embedded in regulation. Optimistic opponents of regulation argue that the banks have learnt their lesson and will behave more responsibly in future. Pessimistic opponents fear that legislators might create a Sarbanes- Oxley squared. The Act passed by the US Congress in 2002, after Enron and other scandals, was bad enough, they say. The banks might now suffer something worse.
The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our panel of economists appears below.
