Dear Readers, Collaborators, and Commenters —As the financial Panic of 2008 recedes in our collective rearview mirror, this author has become increasingly interested in and engaged with the debate surrounding the proper shape and content of financial reform. While I am no expert in the regulation of financial services—nor indeed in almost any of the cognate fields which inform, impinge upon, and affect financial regulation—I am a practitioner in one financial subsector which, for better or worse, has played a central role in the panic and its aftermath; namely, investment banking.
Having practiced M&A and corporate finance within investment banks for approximately two decades, I have an insider's perspective on certain aspects of financial regulation on which many, many people—ranging from exceedingly well-informed and erudite all the way to woefully and stubbornly ignorant—have begun to opine. I myself have many opinions, prejudices, and predilections for what I believe the new regulatory framework for the financial system should look like, and I have shared several of those thoughts on my own blog site on occasion.
However, I am humble enough to realize the extent of my own ignorance, and I am eager to hear from others who have sensible, intelligent, and challenging things to say on this topic. I have been frustrated by how scattered those comments, ideas, and conversations have become, especially in the unregulated and disorganized sphere of the internet. Clever ideas and trenchant conversations take place on widely dispersed and otherwise unconnected blog sites and in the ephemeral and staccato medium of Twitter and email. I believe this weakens both the quality of the conversation and the potential impact these ideas might and should have on the politicians, industry participants, and regulators who have been tasked with fixing the mess we find ourselves in.
Hence, I have started this website to collect in one place the ideas, thoughts, papers, and posts on the topic of our current financial system, its regulatory structure, and the ways in which they should both be reformed which I have stumbled across in my virtual travels. I also hope to entice some of you reading this and engaged in the discussion to contribute your own thoughts here as well, both by means of contributing your own original posts and by adding your voice to the comment streams.
Unlike my other site, this blog site is intended to be a true collaborative forum for open, intelligent discussion. I welcome your ideas, submissions, and thoughts as to how this site should best operate going forward. Please contact me at the following address (not clickable):
Forward, comrades! We have nothing to lose but our chains!
— The Epicurean Dealmaker
There is a need for depth, indeed. So it is good to have a site dedicated to it. There has been too much factional, and fractional thinking
ReplyDeleteMany of the problems at hand comes from the time when Xenophon and his colleagues, invented the word "economics" 24 centuries ago. Others, such as the fractional reserve system, were established much more recently, but even Marx failed to address it for the problem that it intrinsically is. Now, of course, the parallel universe of derivatives is greatly erected upon erroneous ethical, philosophical and mathematical foundations. So thanks for giving an outlet for deeper thinking. There is a need, and no other way.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/