Thursday, April 08, 2010

Goldman is All For Financial Reform because it Reduces their Costs

I guess this is one way to make sure your counterparties don't go bankrupt. Let the US government do the risk analysis for you.

What [Goldman CEO Lloyd] Blankfein and Mr. Cohn are now saying is that their desire for higher capital requirements isn't related to concern about their ability to control Goldman's risk-taking ("Please, Mr. Government, supervise me more closely, allow me to borrow less money, and force me to take less risk"), but their ability to assess and judge the risks of their counterparties, the other firms they are doing deals with.In other words if the SEC and the Treasury get more power and create more transparency then Goldman doesn't have to pay people to do that job. Then if there is another crisis they can blame the government for screwing up instead of their own counterparty risk guys.

That is quite a capitalist way of thinking about reform but all the table pounding by Obama about fat-cat bankers is for naught. The fat-cat bankers will be the ones helped the most from any reform. Like the article points out government reform almost always benefits big business in some way. Case in point the Biotech Industry being helped immensely by ObamaCare.

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