Monday, March 23, 2009

Risk

One thing which stood out from Timmeh's WSJ op-ed (perfect place to leg hump the banksters) was this:
While this crisis was caused by banks taking too much risk, the danger now is that they will take too little.

This story about "risk" is a pleasing one for people who imagine that the masters of the universe, or their managers, actually worry about such things. I don't know if Timmeh does or doesn't believe this, but it's absurd. The current financial crisis has nothing to do with how much risk the banksters were willing to take on. They didn't say: oh, well, I think we should tolerate a bit more risk now. They said: CA CHING CA CHING CA CHING CHING!


I have no idea if Timmeh is a fool or corrupt and I'm not sure which is better or worse. But the idea that all this came about simply because the banksters decided a bit of extra risk was good is an idea only a macro finance person could sanely entertain.