– I havge tried to get this thought across is a numebr of blogs but Terrence expresses it succinctly.

“How convenient it is to blame bankers and CEO compensation for triggering the crisis, especially for politicians and regulators. Charging bankers with greed and incompetence gets politicians and bureaucrats off the hook for what is now clearly a global systemic failure. . . . [I]f the U. S. Fed sets low interest-rate polices, and the U. S. government, through agencies, is promoting and subsidizing mortgage lending, it is not the role of the bank alone to grasp the full systemic risk being created by the incentive structure created by policy. Nor can each individual bank be expected to understand the full range of risks being undertaken by all banks all over the globe. . . . Understanding systemic failure on this scale requires much more than name-calling and cheap accusations aimed at markets and bankers and capitalism in general” — Terence Corcoran, columnist for Canada’s Financial Post.

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