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By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson
Published: January 18 2010 19:59 | Last updated: January 18 2010 19:59
The last few weeks of political developments around the American-European financial system make us feel like we are back in the USSR. During the final years of communism's decline, Soviet bureaucrats argued for futile tweaks to laws that would crack down on speculators and close "loopholes" "“ all in the vain hope they could keep the unproductive system of incentives intact. The US, UK and key European countries are now making the same errors. Rather than recognising the dangerous systemic failures in our financial system, their leaders are proposing bandages that can "“ at best "“ only postpone another, possibly much larger, meltdown.
There is growing recognition that our financial system is running a doomsday cycle. Whenever it fails, we rely on lax money and fiscal policies to bail it out. This response teaches the financial sector a simple lesson: take large gambles to get paid handsomely, and don't worry about the costs "“ they will be paid by taxpayers (through fiscal bail-outs), savers (through interest rates cut to zero), and many workers (through lost jobs). Our financial system is thus resurrected to gamble again "“ and to fail again. Such cycles have been manifest at least since the 1970s and they are getting larger. This danger has even been recognised at the Bank of England, where Andrew Haldane, responsible for financial stability, recently published an eloquent critique of what he calls our "doom loop".
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