Thus far, emergency measures taken by public authorities (issuing institutes and Governments) to restore functioning financial institutions have focused on further, even systemization, drift the most glaring which resulted practices followed by the banks. This is evident with respect to their liquidity. But the deterioration of the latter is located at the origin of the crisis.
In a lecture he gave on April 17 in New York at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College on the theme "Which is primarily responsible for the credit crisis", Henry Kaufman, a Wall Street veteran, unanimously respected (and listened to by those who want to hear), said: "the Fed under Alan Greenspan conduct has not recognized the crucial role that the large financial conglomerates have played to change the idea that the public of". the liquidity. Traditionally, this quality was dealing with the assets of the balance sheet possession of underlying assets at any time: ad nutum. "But in recent decades, the attention is postponed to the liabilities: liquidity has become implicitly synonymous with easy access to the loan. It is this passage that I propose to comment here: that are issuing institutes (Fed, ECB, Bank of England, essentially) obliged to intervene in emergency otherwise ensure the liquidity of the banks that they are more on the market

What is at issue here is a powerful market ideology which unify the logic of capitalism. The eyes have trouble to open, both the ideology in question is compelling (but academia and large schools of management gives finally some signs of regained lucidity!) and powerful lobbying by large investment on political power ("conglomerates") banks. The France has not escaped this abuse. Reflection of a banker: the status of universal bank has this good is available to trading the depositors ' money.
Consubstantial logic to capitalism but often negated by his supporters and his actors (especially since the "financial revolution" of our time): the strength of the whole system is the strength of each of its components (first enterprises, households then on the one hand, public finances of the other). The regularity of the payments is necessary for the proper execution of the myriad of transactions which bind two to two and that players regardless of the size of the market (another definition of capitalism: contractual economy or economy of Exchange). It requires that each entity, a fortiori of banks, this constraint: own funds exceed the amount of the capital. They also intended to finance a minimum but adequate driving very liquid assets, but low yield.
This opposes the illusion of the whole market and thus summarized globalization: everything is negotiable, including credit through "securitization". A vast market offers will find an application. In a column published March 22, 2002 the global economy was still struggling to recover from the crash of the "new economy", it wrote in these columns: "one of the most effective techniques of degeneration of capitalism, the faculty open to credit institutions to transfer the risk to others (the" contract"), is growing again...". "Experience has shown dramatically that suddenly the entire system may crash: buyers shirk all at the same time." The ideology of the market triumphed: no bank took into account in its model... liquidity risk. New fact, "The Journal of Economic Perspectives", edited by the influential American Economic Association, has just published an article written by three professors (Harvard, Princeton) where it is shown that, as opposed to individual titles (an obligation, for example), "structured" debt instruments (or several types of obligations are "packaged" together) are much more exposed to the risk of the situation.
In the United States, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are the head. They point to the further performance of their respective tradings. They want to repay the State for new free rein to pay their own way "competencies" (sic). A return of investment banks would result in a still never seen volatility markets. But how the real economy is sinking into recession would end a semblance of health By wild restructuring left to the sole discretion of managers that have regained their freedom