July 28, 2009

Systemic risk, here, there and everywhere

Sir when you in “At your own risk” July 28, write about forecasts as “self-fulfilling prophecies” you are precisely describing a systemic risk in regulations. Systemic risk does not only signify a part of the system that becomes so large as to endanger the system, as that concept seems to have been exclusively interpreted lately, but it also includes the risk of introducing a threat to the system, a virus... like the concept of forcing upon the banks the use of credit rating agencies.

Now when you lecture University presidents about how the “public’s intellectual virtues – curiosity about other fields, aversion to dogma could do the discipline some good”, instead of “public” you could use “readers” and apply it to yourself. The ease, by which on a whim you exclude the opinions of some of your readers like me, shows you share the same problem.

What if I would send you an exclusive and mindboggling story? Would you have to let it go? Have you hijacked yourself? That is sure a systemic risk? Don’t you agree?