Saturday, January 23, 2010

Fim da responsabilidade limitada nos bancos?

É o que é (mais ou menos) proposto aqui:

What has been received little attention so far is the structuring of liability in banking (Sin 2008). In the early days of fractional reserve banking, bank owners were subject to unlimited liability. In the US, double liability for bank shareholders was common up to the Great Depression. All American investment banks were partnerships into the 1970’s and the last one, Goldman Sachs, only converted itself into a limited liability corporation about a decade ago. Back in the 70s, US financial sector liabilities were less than 20% of GDP. Today the figure is close to 120%. Leverage has increased enormously. Back then, stringent liability rules inhibited risk taking. In the days when such liability provisions applied to banks, “conservative” was the adjective habitually attached to “banker.” It does not fit the high-stakes gambling “quants” of recent years.

If bank stockholders were subject to double liability today, it would hardly be possible to attract enough capital into banking for the needs of a modern economy. Most stockholders have little or no ability to control the risks that bank managements assume. Liability provisions, however, could be applied directly to managers rather than to stockholders so as to change the incentives to assume risk that bank executives face.

1 comment:

CN said...

Tem sido debatido entre libertarians e anarchists com tendências anti-corporativas-big-business se o estatuto "limitado" não resulta apenas de um protecção estatal, e assim ,todas as empresas deveriam ser não limitadas, ou de responsabilidade ilimitada.

No caso dos Bancos, a questão do actual sistema monetário onde se protegem os Bancos para proteger depósitos que deviam estar protegidos por natureza de 100% de reservas, tem de se equacionada.

Isto porque o actual sistema de forma informal na verdade é:

bancos emprestam dinheiro de DOs além de criar DOs para conceder crédito sem intermediação, sabendo-se que em crise, bancos central vai emitir mais moeda para proteger depositantes

Este é o sistema actual, mas mais termos valia 100% de reservas, e o crescimento da moeda fazer-se via despesa pública, a qual tende a afectar directamente a inflação tornando assim o seu efeito muito mais visível do que via crescimento de crédito.