by Calculated Risk on 4/18/2010 07:00:00 PM

Ryan Avent discusses the Minsky Conference in The Economist: First, define the problem

I HAVE been meaning to summarise my thoughts on financial regulatory reform in the wake of the Hyman Minsky conference on same. I have to say, it has left me with a sense of resigned cycnicism.
...
On to more specific thoughts. The Federal Reserve is very unhappy with the prospect of losing its regulatory authority over all but the largest financial institutions. ... I found this all to be exasperating. None of the attending presidents adequately explained how a Fed that completely failed to prevent dangerous consolidation before the crisis should now be viewed as a credible enemy of too-big-to-fail after the crisis. None of the attending presidents provided tangible evidence of internal changes designed to make the Fed a more credible regulator. Each was asked about the odd disconnect between the Fed's pre-crisis actions and its post-crisis rhetoric, and each responded by saying little more than "we've learned our lesson, now trust us".... If it believes it can regulate most effectively, [the Fed] should be explicit about how it might do that. ... If the incentives were in place to turn a blind eye before, and little has changed, then "we've learned our lesson" will not make for a sustainable model of competent regulation.

... several of the conference's speakers made the point that regulators had about 90% of the tools they needed to prevent a serious crisis before the crisis hit. They just didn't use them. A lack of needed tools is a convenient excuse for everyone who failed to do their job before the crash, which is everyone, and so you see the reform debate focusing on which new rules or institutions or regulators or authorities are needed that weren't previously around. In some cases, the new tools argument makes sense, but most of the time the real problem was that the people in charge were unwilling to do their jobs.

I think we need an explanation of how the financial reform would have caught the bubble earlier.