Thursday, October 27, 2011
More from Colombo on the PCJP's note on the financial crisis
Ron Colombo has another post on the PCJP's note on the financial crisis. He includes a helpful summary of the note, along with this bottom line:
In its closing pages, the Note puts forth a series of policy suggestions - and these have grabbed headlines of late. Unfortunately, this is also where the wheels fall off.
It starts with the call for "a world political authority" to address the global problems of peacce, security, arms control, human rights, migration, the environment, and, of course, the global economy. This "Authority" ought to be vested with "structures and adequate, effective mechanisms equal to its mission and the expectations placed in it."
The Note then suggests the need to revisit the Bretton Woods agreement, the need for "a minimum, shared body of rules to manage the global financial market," an expansion of more nations into the G20, a central world bank, taxation on financial transactions, recapitization of banks with public funds, and segregation of "ordinary credit and Investment Banking."
The Note's drafters certainly don't suffer from a lack of ambition.
They do, however, suffer from a lack of serious engagement. Love them or hate them, the policy prescriptions are basically rattled off, with little thought or discussion. As such, when it comes to these prescriptions, the Note is not at all persuasive. Indeed, it doesn't even attempt to persuade!
So, if one wishes to critique the Note, there's little to actually engage with (at least when it comes to the policy prescriptions). No new or compelling arguments are put forth explaining why its proposals ought to be followed. It's almost as if the Note's authors believed these proposal were self-justifying.
Pretty strange in my humble opinion. And whether one's favorably disposed to the policy suggestions or not, this is sadly a lost opportunity. The PCJP could have made an authentic contribution to the debate. It did not. Instead, it merely endorsed a candidate - and attempted to dress its endorsement up as something more serious.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/10/more-from-colombo-on-the-pcjps-note-on-the-financial-crisis.html