6 issues to steer financial reform

Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a multipart series. Read Part 2, "'Wind-down': a bailout alternative," and Part 3, "The failure of 'too big to fail.' "

The financial crisis and its lingering aftermath have revealed serious vulnerabilities in our financial system. The challenges are comparable to those posed by the great depression of the 1930s. Yet the approaches taken to date to fix the problems have been fitful, fragmented and frenzied, rather than deliberate and thoughtful. That's what makes me think we need a financial commission to sort things out.

Of course, the political process is most receptive to reform while memories of the crisis remain strong and its aftereffects are still being felt. But there is a serious downside to legislating reform while we are so close to what happened. Reform proposals tend to focus on preventing the same sequence of events that we very recently lived through.

This is reminiscent of the old adage about generals preparing to fight the last war. The next potential financial crisis is going to be different from the last one, just as that one was very different from the savings-and-loan crisis of the early 1980s.

There is another very serious drawback to legislating reforms while memories of what happened are still fresh. Many of the proposals are suffused with hostility toward groups that are viewed as malefactors, especially "bankers" and "Wall Street," which have almost become curse words.

It's easy to be mad, especially if you have been burned by the crisis in some way, but it is not a good backdrop for the thoughtful legislative reforms that we need.

Nothing disrupts the process of rational thought quite so much as the prior conviction that the problems were caused by the greed of wicked people. But the fact is that commercial bankers, investment bankers and mortgage bankers were not suddenly caught up in an epidemic of greed -- they have always been greedy.

Usually, their greed has acceptable, even good results for society, but occasionally a business and regulatory environment arises in which it leads to disaster. If we intend to prevent another crisis, that environment should be the focus.

To examine the issue properly requires a coherent approach that is most appropriate to a commission with a broad mandate. In the best of all worlds, the findings of such a commission would precede legislative proposals. The articles in this series are agenda suggestions for such a commission.

They are organized in terms of six major issues, which are summarized briefly below. Future articles will deal with the separate issues in more detail.

Is there a way to allow the failure of firms that are now viewed as "Too Big to Fail" (TBTF)?

One of the most traumatic and disruptive features of the recent financial crisis was that the government was forced to rescue firms that had behaved recklessly. These firms were TBTF, meaning that the repercussions from their failure would have destabilized the entire system.

Draconian measures that would require TBTF firms to shrink drastically in size and complexity are probably not feasible. Aside from that, is there any way to reduce the repercussions of failure to the point where allowing failure becomes a viable option for regulators?

Why have regulators failed to prevent excessive risk-taking by TBTF firms? ...CONTINUED

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