Japan sees an opening in the financial crisis

ARTICLE: "In Finance, Japan Sees An Opening," by Martin Fackler, New York Times, 21 October 2008.

WORLD NEWS: "China Appears to Join Europe In Call for Overhaul of Rules," by Ian Johnson, Wall Street Journal, 27 October 2008.

A CRISIS IN FINANCE: "U.S. Does Not Support A Global Crisis Regulator: Likely Isue at a Financial Summit Meeting," by Mark Landler, New York Times, 6 November 2008.

Now that the sextet of America's world-dominating investment banks have been crushed by the subprime crisis, Japan's leaders "say they believe their country should take a more active role in economic leadership" globally. Europe is too busy crowing, but Japan worries more about filling the leadership void, so says Fackler.

While smart Western observers like Sebastian Mallaby dream of a Bretton Woods II deal at the upcoming summit, it's starting to look like the last time Bush-Cheney get to stand up--rather isolated yet again--against the rest of the Core regarding the rule-set reset that others demand but from which our White House seems determined to shy away.

China, always looking to follow, comes out with a bold call for "what they said," pointing at the EU pillars.

As serious System Perturbations go, this one disappoints for now, but it probably makes sense to view this summit as simply the Bush administration's swan song.

I hope to be proven wrong, but expect me to snore through the say-everything-but-do-nothing proceedings. Probably just a practice session for the real deal with Obama.

But mark my words: eventually the global SEC is a must. The Core as a whole simply has to get its collective arms around what's happening in terms of inter-market financial flows, and such an institution is where those new rules will inevitably reside.

Comments

[Matt Scarborough]

Although a global SEC may be needed eventually, I think there is an easier precendent in the Basel II framework. It established a set of rules that are global, even though each nation's regulators still retain the enforcement role. Although each nation has argued for its own tweaks, it establishes a fairly standard rule set that all major banks (defined by asset size or multi-national presence) must follow. Perhaps a similar framework for investment banking and hedge funds could be implemented more quickly than convincing countries to give up any of the enforcement role.

Either way, I completely agree that a global rule set is needed. The investment banking arms of these insitutions is generally what has brought them down, and a Basel II-like framework could have helped.