<story><title>The rotten heart of finance</title><url>http://www.economist.com/node/21558281?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_rotten_heart_of_finance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>I read things like this and by fixing LIBOR they&apos;re treating a symptom rather than addressing the cause.&lt;p&gt;My belief--and many seem to disagree with me on this whenever I&apos;ve brought it up before--is that we erred in allowing investment banks to incorporate.&lt;p&gt;IMHO investment banks need to act like law firms: as partnerships with &lt;i&gt;unlimited&lt;/i&gt; liability. Currently there is no incentive to not pervert the system and manage risk because:&lt;p&gt;- no one is going to jail for criminal acts committed in these financial crises (eg loan documentation fraud and illegal foreclosings in the subprime fallout);&lt;p&gt;- there is no financial incentive to act responsibly because if you go bankrupt this year last year&apos;s bonus is already banked;&lt;p&gt;- central banks have been perverted into being welfare for investment bankers as a so-called &quot;lender of last resort&quot;. Ostensibly they are ensuring the function of the financial system. In practice they are giving investment banks an unhealthy appetite for risk. Banks and funds need to be allowed to fail; and&lt;p&gt;- governments are complicit in this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>I agree with you. The partnership structure forces law firms to be run very conservatively, and prevents them from scaling to huge sizes, which has the advantage of limiting the amount of consolidation in the industry. I think for professions like banking, law, and accounting, these are good incentives.&lt;p&gt;I think it would also help to take more seriously the ethical responsibilities of bankers as fiduciaries&apos; for peoples&apos; money. A law firm cannot represent both sides of a merger, because that would involve a conflict of interest. So why can Goldman take positions where they stand to profit enormously if their clients lose money?</text></comment>
<story><title>The rotten heart of finance</title><url>http://www.economist.com/node/21558281?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_rotten_heart_of_finance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>I read things like this and by fixing LIBOR they&apos;re treating a symptom rather than addressing the cause.&lt;p&gt;My belief--and many seem to disagree with me on this whenever I&apos;ve brought it up before--is that we erred in allowing investment banks to incorporate.&lt;p&gt;IMHO investment banks need to act like law firms: as partnerships with &lt;i&gt;unlimited&lt;/i&gt; liability. Currently there is no incentive to not pervert the system and manage risk because:&lt;p&gt;- no one is going to jail for criminal acts committed in these financial crises (eg loan documentation fraud and illegal foreclosings in the subprime fallout);&lt;p&gt;- there is no financial incentive to act responsibly because if you go bankrupt this year last year&apos;s bonus is already banked;&lt;p&gt;- central banks have been perverted into being welfare for investment bankers as a so-called &quot;lender of last resort&quot;. Ostensibly they are ensuring the function of the financial system. In practice they are giving investment banks an unhealthy appetite for risk. Banks and funds need to be allowed to fail; and&lt;p&gt;- governments are complicit in this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>photon137</author><text>I agree with every single point you&apos;ve made except for the third (ie about central banks). Central banks need to act as the &quot;lender of last resort&quot; - however, what needs to be fixed is the transmission mechanism - so that the emergency loans reach the economy when it needs it and not be used up by intermediary banks trying to shore up their capital reserves when they&apos;ve blown them up playing roulette.&lt;p&gt;But I think, if points 1 &amp;#38; 2 are addressed well enough, the transmission mechanism would work better and the banks would become what they ought to be - conduits for monetary policy and price discovery.&lt;p&gt;Point 4 - the reason Wall Street bankers get 10-100x the salary of a top-notch achiever in any other sector is because the government has created regulations which allow banks to have an oligopoly in this sector and pay its minions disproportionately high salaries - what saddens me is the same government which wants its best students to go into STEM ends up encouraging them to go into a non-productive profession.</text></comment>