Wednesday, May 26, 2004

The Myth of Systemic Risk

Ian Grigg points to these remarks made at the St. Louis Banking Conference by Professor George Kaufman:

I also come from the perspective that "systemic risk" in banking is not a threat and has not been a great danger in world history. It is a scare term, much like the use of the word "fire" in a crowded theater. Systemic risk is used shamelessly by regulators to justify their own actions, and by novelists and movie script writers to provide plots for horror stories. This is my bottom line, and if I had two hours I could go on and give you all the evidence.