The Pin Factory Blog

The reforms to financial regulation that followed the 2008 crisis have been dead wrong, argues Deri Hughes. Interventionism and subsidies for established banks have choked competition and added even more layers of protection for established banks than existed before. The answer is to take the state out of the money and banking business.

The most tangible policy response to the ‘main’ financial crisis of 2007-9 has been the series of (on-going) reforms of the system of financial regulation in those countries that were most affected by the crisis in question. The need for such reform, and the nature of the reform that is thought to be required, have both been adopted as received wisdom by the majority of policy-makers. However, given the risks normally posed by received interventionist wisdom, it is worth giving some thought as to whether or not the current approach is, in fact, the most appropriate one. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to consider the nature of the current reforms, and then to set out some alternative, and rather different, policy prescriptions.

Litigious Albion

In the United Kingdom, the attention that the financial crisis has received has been intense. Accordingly, the political and official appetite for reform has not waned. For example, as of November 2012, the Financial Services Bill is before Parliament, a Parliamentary inquiry into ‘banking standards’ is under way, and the draft Banking Reform Bill has been published. In addition, a Financial Stability Board (FSB) working group, led by the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the main British financial regulator, has announced its intention to focus on the activities of the so-called ‘shadow banking system’.

The regulatory reforms that have been, and are being, implemented can be divided into two broad categories.

Firstly, those relating to conduct.

Secondly, those relating to stability.

In essence, conduct regulation relates to the way in which financial services providers interact with clients, counterparties and the public at large. Its range is very broad, covering virtually every aspect of financial businesses’ commercial activities, and applying to businesses ranging from a self employed financial advisor to a universal banking behemoth. 

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It does get very annoying when we've all the usual prodnoses telling us that we must eat our five a day, stop puffing on the gaspers and limit ourself to one small brown ale a week for the sake of our livers. This is all to "save the NHS", or to save the public accounts from the costs of dealing with us cancerous lard tubs as the cirrhosis explodes. Other than the ghastly nonsense of the puritans (you know, the worry that someone, somewhere, might be having fun), the despicable reduction in the freedom and liberty to chart our own course the the inevitable grave, there's really only one other major problem with this point.

It ain't true.

Most certainly it's true that treating these diseases of a life well lived costs the NHS money. But not hacking out the pickled and fatty liver in our 50s costs the NHS much more. For people do go on to survive a decade or more of senile dementia, just as one alternative and even more awful fate. This costs more.

Some will recognise this as the argument that Philip Morris paid to be presented to the Czech Government. It was roundly condemned at the time as being a quite disgusting piece of pro-tobacco propaganda. It could even have been so but it did have the saving grace that it was actually true. For as a rough and ready guide, those things which kills us from chronic diseases around and about our retirement date cost the state much less than our surviving to a google old age does. And we've even got a Congressional Budget Office report making the case for us now:

In terms of the policy's effect on the budget, lower health care spending per capita would push down federal spending, but increased longevity would have the opposite effect. Throughout the first decade of the policy, reduced health care expenditures (primarily for Medicare and Medicaid) would mean that the federal government would spend less than it would have otherwise. The reduction in federal outlays would total $730 million over the period between 2013 and 2021. During the second decade, however, the effects on longevity would begin to dominate and federal spending would be higher than it would have been otherwise — an effect that would continue through 2085. The two principal drivers of that increase in spending would be Social Security and Medicare. Improvements in longevity from a reduction in smoking tend to have their greatest effect on the size of the elderly population and thus tend to boost spending on programs aimed at that population. Spending for Medicaid, by contrast, would be reduced throughout the period of the projection — a reflection of the wider age range of that program's beneficiaries.

The odds are that if you want to live a long life you shouldn't smoke. Nor eat nor drink as I do. But it still is really true that those of us who go out in our 50s and 60s from these diseases of an excess of indulgence save everyone else money by their not having to pay our pensions or health care bills for decades.

Stopping these behaviours may well produce longer lives: not that it's any of your damn business how other people decide to treat themselves. But it most certainly won't save any money.

I know that this brings fits of the vapours to the more maiden auntish of the British left but there really is a very good reason why we want to have a more market orientated health care system in the UK: 

The NHS was criticised as having among the slowest processes in the world in dealing with new drugs and clinical trials, scientists and experts said at a conference in London organised by Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant. A source at the meeting of more than 100 clinicians and scientists said a key conclusion was that “NHS environment needs to embrace new medicines more rapidly, not as at present more slowly, than other countries.” In addition NHS “trusts and clinicians need to be supported to be able to carry out research, for example by freeing up senior consultant time to do research or by incentivising investigators to do research.”

The other way of describing this is that the NHS is slow at innovation: the process of actually using nerw inventions to do things rather than that creation of new inventions in the first place. And there's good economic research on this very point too.

William Baumol has been pointing out for years that either planned or market based systems can do that invention. But planned, centralised, systems are very bad indeed at getting that innovation going. People actually using those inventions to do new things, or old things better, faster or cheaper. Market based systems do that innovation vastly better.

Thus, given that we'd rather like new treatments, new drugs, new and better ways of doing things, to percolate though the NHS thus we'd like there to be a market structure there.

Note that this doesn't, necessarily, mean that the government has to stop financing it. But it does mean that we want to have competing suppliers: of any ownership structure you like. Co-ops, charitable, for profit, mutuals, that part of it really doesn't matter for this point. But we do want people competing in a marketplace, even if it is competition for tax funding. For that's what drives innovation, the existence of the market. And given that the NHS seems to be worse at this than everyone else, as well as being just about the only health service with no market at all in it, that all seems to tie up logically doesn't it? Introduce markets in order to make the NHS of tomorrow better than the one of today.

Canada’s motto of “peace, order and good government” may not stir the blood as America’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” or France’s “liberté, égalité, fraternité” but, all things considered, the country’s not in a bad place compared with other advanced economies. The banking system is solid, government debt and borrowing manageable and growth and inflation about as good as could be expected from a major trading nation.

The UK government now hopes that Mark Carney, the current governor of the Bank of Canada, can sprinkle a bit of that Canadian angel dust over here as the next governor of the Bank of England. Mr Carney certainly fits the bill of everyone’s image of the ideal Canadian – modest, polite, no-nonsense – someone you can have a perfectly pleasant dinner with.

To get a sense of the man, check out two major interviews earlier this year on YouTube – BBC’s HARDtalk in August and Reuters TV in January.

Saviours seldom meet  mass expectations for salvation, especially when the sins have been so egregious and widespread. Mr Carney is no messiah, thankfully, but does know what the problems are, what it will take to fix them and what any central bank can actually do. That realism is what’s most needed now.

When asked his general view of the global economic situation, Mr Carney said:  “We’re going through a period of de-leveraging across the advanced economies. There has been a three-decade increase in the amount of debt of governments and households and in some cases corporations across the advanced economies, notably the US, the UK and some parts of Europe…There’s going to be a multi-year process, really measured in decades, of reducing that leverage.”

So, no quick fixes, Cameron & Osborne, Miliband & Balls, and don’t pretend otherwise.

What’s a central bank to do then? “Central banks cannot solve this crisis. Central banks have to focus on, first, delivering price stability. It’s absolutely in no one’s interest to have deflation or runaway inflation…Secondly, we have to do our bit, and it’s not  in its entirety, but our bit to keep the financial system functioning…Central banks can do all of that but just that…will not be sufficient to produce the growth and employment that people want. Other steps have to be taken by national governments.”

So, don’t go to your local central bank to cover the failings of your governments.

And what about Paul Krugman’s belief that central banks are too obsessed with controlling inflation and that a bit of inflation would be a good thing? “I think we’re appropriately obsessed with price stability. The risk in the UK has been deflation. And what the BOE did … (was provide)… additional stimulus through bond purchases - quantitative easing - in order to ensure that… there is not deflation in the UK. That price stability goes both ways…In order for (Krugman’s extra inflation) to make a difference …you have to get ahead of the bond market. You have to have a very large surprise, very quickly in order for it to make a difference on the fiscal side and it won’t work. “

How very Canadian – a sympathetic understanding of quantitative easing but no illusions about fooling financial markets on the dangers of inflation. Clearly a man who understands markets.

As a fellow countryman, I wish Mr Carney all the best and look forward to seeing this cool, calm and collected Canadian cope with Britain’s jumped-up politicians, hyper-active journalists and depressive citizenry.

Madsen comments on the new Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. He is, says Madsen,

probably the best candidate to perform an impossible job.  He had a good record in Canada, which weathered the financial storm better than most.  He has sound views on controlling inflation, and on controlling public spending rather than distributing a largesse of newly printed and borrowed money.

His basic problem remains that the system of centralized control of a monopoly fiat currency may not be up to the task of servicing a modern economy without the wild swings induced by political oversight.  Competing currencies, some commodity-backed, and with market interest rates, might be a better model.  Carney would indeed go down in legend if he were able peacefully to transform the one system into the other.

To that I would add that Carney has been remarkably open-minded about both Austrian and NGDP-focused stories about the crisis. He certainly seems like a good appointment, but the task required of a central banker is a godlike one: to avoid disequilibrium between savings and borrowing, he must be omniscient about people's money demand and plans for the future. However able Carney might be, I'm not sure if that's a job that anyone can do.

My old friend John Whittingdale MP, Chairman of the House of Commons Media Committee, says that if the press become regulated in the same way that the broadcast media are, our newspapers will turn out just as bland and boring. Mind you, it is interesting no note that even all the regulation that we do have on broadcast media does not stop it messing up big time – I cite the Newsnight Savile and McAlpine fiascos in evidence.

Three sorts of people in particular would like to see press regulation in Britain. The first is innocent members of the public who have been humiliated or distressed by press stories. They include people who have had their phones hacked. And people who may have a (greater or lesser) public persona but still believe their personal affairs should remain private.

The second group who would like to see press regulation are the Left. That is because most print newspapers take a right-of-centre stance. Some are indeed owned by people of overtly right-of-centre views and make no bones about promoting such views. Inconveniencing these papers and their owners would make certain folk on the Left quiver with delight.

The third group is of course the politicians of all parties. What you have to remember is that politicians think themselves honourable people with good ideas that will improve the way we live (even though these ideas conflict with the ideas of other politicians). The last thing they want is that beneficial process thwarted by self-opinionated journalists who can say what they like without having to face an election every five years. Or to have their authority undermined by campaigns such as exposing just what they claim on expenses, pursued by journalists who are not worthy to lick the shoes of them and their honourable colleagues.

Regarding the first group, I'm not sure if phone hacking is actually against the law, but there is a simple remedy, which is to make it so explicitly. And the limits on press intrusion into people's privacy, while it is always going to be debatable, is something that we already have rules on, that work tolerably well.

On the second, is it acceptable that rich folks can buy newspapers and use them to promote whatever views they want? Well yes, pretty much. We are supposed to believe in free speech, and if we don't agree with what our newspapers are trying to push on us, we don't have to buy them. I resent much more the BBC, which (if you want to own a TV at all), you have to pay for even if you hate it.

As for the third group, I wouldn't let them touch the press with mint surgical tweezers. Editors have been telling us what an impossible position they will be in if they have to check with some quango before they can print a story. But that is not how it works. Everybody knows that a statutory regulator has the power to close a paper down with fines, inquiries and judgements. Gradually, over the years, editors will get used to reining themselves in here or there, to stay on the regulator's good side. And over the years, the regulator's staff will find more and more jobs for themselves to do, and intrude themselves more and more into the affairs of the papers. We have seen the same thing in other industries. Soon, the papers will become mere lapdogs of the political class. And we have seen from other countries where that leads to.

Six years ago Keith Boyfield and I wrote a report for this Institute showing that both the EU options then under discussion, exit or accepting the EU as it then was, were sub-optimal.  Since then both those options have worsened.  We called the paper “EUtopia” and painted a picture of an EU that would be better for the members as a whole, better for the UK and, at least in our view, achievable over a longish process of charm, leadership and negotiation. The report was well received especially by the man who is now our Foreign Secretary.

While the report was still in draft, we had a meeting with the then chief of EU matters at the FCO.  The person concerned was, as one would expect, both charming and intelligent.  We asked about the FCO’s vision for the EU and the UK’s place within it and about the strategy for achieving that ideal.  This was greeted with astonishment. The FCO, we were told, had not such forward plan, indeed no planning of any such sort, and should not be expected to operate in that way.  The FCO, and the government on the FCO’s advice, purely reacted to events.

We pointed out that the French strategised their goals and worked purposefully towards them.  That was why the EU worked so well for France.  That cut no ice and the meeting broke up.

Talking with senior politicians, albeit not FCO civil servants, it seems little has changed.  Indeed it may have got worse as the UK’s room for manoeuvre has reduced and we are more and more seen as sulking in a corner.  Apparently, the FCO today thanks that no strategy for the EU is required because it is more or less right as it is.  The FCO, after all wrote many of the rules including the Lisbon Treaty.  For “FCO” today read “Brussels Fifth COlumn”.

Lib Dems apart, few others take that view: not politicians, not business people, and not the electorate.  Doubtless the FCO justify their lofty view by claiming to be better informed than the common people.  The reality is that these civil servants have forgotten the meaning of the word “servant” and that we pay their salaries.

We need an FCO that can visualise an EU that is best for the EU as a whole, best for the UK and achievable and then create a plan to achieve it.  The UK has plenty of potential allies.  Most member states should applaud a reduction in governance costs and accounts that auditors can approve.  French peasant farmers could be brought back to the barricades to fight against EU farm subsidies going to the huge agri-corporations, not the small farmers.  The biggest sufferers from the idiotic EU fish policies are the fishermen themselves. The German on the Hauptstraβe likes being a main contributor to the EU budget as much as we do.

Contrast that with sitting on the sidelines and being isolated as Mr Grumpy.  The Eurovision song contest tells us all we need to know about how many votes the UK attracts in the modern Europe.  Using the veto merely adds to the antipathy.

In short, the Foreign Office is not up to the job. We would probably be better off if we did not have one at all but that is not realistic.  It should be replaced by an FCO that understands what the UK needs and wants and can create the charm offensive needed to achieve it.

This week sees the 70th anniversary of the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, commonly known as the Beveridge Report, which is often credited as the underpinning of the welfare state in the UK (and several other countries which emulated the UK approach). To some extent this is an exaggeration as several aspects of the welfare state existed before 1942, especially in the area of education. Thus Beveridge represents a major expansion of an already existing shift away from private and philanthropic welfare and towards state provision.

It is salutary to note the timing - in 1942 Britain was in the midst of the greatest expansion of state activity it has ever witnessed. Government reached into and controlled nearly every aspect of socio-economic activity, allocating and planning resources, prices and labour to a minute degree. This philosophy, which proved highly successful for fighting a total war, was retained in peace time and employed as a mechanism for providing goods and services which had hitherto been privately provided. Many industries were nationalised and those areas of the economy which were left 'private' were heavily controlled. It was this state of affairs which promoted Hayek to publish The Road to Serfdom in 1943.

Without tracing the history of the past 70 years, it is clear that whilst some aspects of the World War II legacy have been rolled back - for instance the denationalisation of many industries during the 1980s - much of the philosophy of the Beveridge Report remains essentially intact. Whilst the nature of the welfare state has evolved, the mechanisms for provision are broadly identical to those introduced in 1945. For instance, the NHS remains a 'free-at-the-point-of-delivery' system in contrast to the Netherlands which dropped this approach and switched to a 'Bismarckian' one (nonetheless retaining the third-party payer problems inherent in all major health systems including the US one).

Readers of this website will hopefully already be convinced that the Beveridge inspired welfare state has been an unmitigated disaster for the provision of welfare in the UK, so I won't rehearse the arguments and the evidence. For those wanting a good introduction, James Bartholomew's classic The Welfare State We're In is a sensible place to start. Suffice to say, and despite the pernicious prejudice of many statists, Classical Liberals like myself care deeply for the plight of the poor, sick and needy. However, instead of clinging to failed and bankrupt systems which do far more harm than good to both recipients of welfare and society as a whole and especially to those at the bottom of society, we seek a different approach. Of course, those opposed to the status quo adopt a variety of positions: from those who argue for different modes of provision (school vouchers for instance); to those who desire a much smaller welfare state which only offers aid to the very poorest in society; to those who wish to do away with state welfare altogether

On the one hand, it is quite clear that opponents of the welfare state have - for the most part - utterly failed to convince the majority of the case for radical reform and retrenchment. Some tentative steps have been made in the field of school and higher education reform but healthcare, pensions and social protection remain largely untouched and any genuine and far-reaching attempts to do so would be political suicide. The forces of vested interests so clearly described in Public Choice Theory indicate why this is so - nonetheless the only means to overcome the barrier of vested interests is via the dissemination of ideas and ideological support so we must continue this effort. Moreover, recent years have seen the resurgence of the regulatory and license state - an activity which grew popular with the denationalisations of the 1980s and has been compounded with the recent Banking Crisis into a widespread belief that markets cannot function properly without state intervention. Many of these interventions are logically underpinned by the existence of state welfare provision; e.g. alcoholism is creating a burden on the NHS so should be prevented. Strike at the welfare state and we strike at the root of this approach as well.

On the other hand, we must continue to propose sensible mechanisms for moving from the status quo and towards private provision. As I have argued before, this is probably best done piecemeal. Given that opposition to the welfare state spans a spectrum of opinion, it is also sensible to move from reform of provision towards much greater privatisation and then ask the question of whether we need any state provision of welfare at all. One major area to target would be universality. This was one of the key principles of Beveridge and is one of the most unnecessary and expensive aspects of welfare provision - witness pensioners donating their winter fuel payments to charity. Universality was also introduced in order to engender support for the welfare state amongst the better off, remove it and that plank may also disappear.

Reformers must be careful, however. I would argue that the creation of so-called 'internal markets' and use of private providers in such areas as PPI and the NHS may actually be harmful to the cause of privatisation. Government is a poor customer and its size means it prefers to deal with large, equally bureaucratic companies such as Capita and Serco rather than SMEs - this assists large companies in dominating market sectors and leads to monopolistic outcomes. Bad privatisations such as the railways lead to the discrediting of privatisation in general. Failures discredit attempts to privatise properly as the many PPI scandals and the G4S scandal show. Pseudo-markets are likely to lead to exploitation of consumers by entrenched market-occupants protected by state regulation and intervention - witness the energy market or banking.

Even if everyone suddenly saw sense and decided to tear down the features of the welfare state, it would still take many years of consistent reform to return to private provision in order to build up the necessary markets and charitable endowments which the original government interventions so comprehensively destroyed. There would also have to be sweeping reforms in other areas: radical reform of planning laws to allow housing to become more affordable, large scale tax cuts and endowments funded by sell-offs of state property and - perhaps most critically - a return to sound money to allow people to save sufficiently for their futures instead of being impoverished by government inflationism. The welfare state has taken 70 years to build into its present appalling and oppressive form and it may well take 70 years or more to repair the damage, even if that were the general consensus. Still, there is no time like the present... 

I was on Channel Four News commenting on so-called tax avoidance yesterday evening, putting across some points that I think are important to the recent discussion.

I take the view that nothing requires people or firms to voluntarily pay more in taxation than the law requires.  Indeed, most try to minimize their taxes by offsetting their allowable expenses.  Firms have a duty to their shareholders to operate efficiently, and this includes paying no more tax than the law specifies.  This is tax minimization, not tax avoidance.

A firm like Amazon follows the rules of both the EU and the UK, choosing to locate in Luxembourg to take advantage of its benign tax rates.  The EU single market not only allows firms to do this, it encourages it by preventing other governments from imposing extra taxes on such firms.  Google similarly chooses to locate in the Republic of Ireland.  Locating in one EU member state and paying its taxes gives access to markets in all of them.  The single market was designed to ensure that.

Firms should not be blamed for minimizing their taxes.  The people who should be blamed are the politicians who maintain tax laws so intricate and complicated that firms have to employ expensive teams of lawyers and accountants to navigate them.  Taxes should be so low and so simple that people will neither seek nor need complex shelters.  That would bring in more revenue, if done right, as well as making tax liability more transparent. 

There is no level of tax that is somehow more 'fair' or more 'moral' than that stipulated by the law.  It should be the laws interpreted by judges that decide what is right, rather than the opinion of media commentators and politicians.  If law-makers do not like the present levels of taxes that are paid, they have the power to change the law, just as any firms that found the new levels too punitive would have the power to move elsewhere.

The whole discussion of so-called tax avoidance tackles the wrong agenda, in that the aim of it is to have government take in more taxation.  Instead of trying to increase what government siphons off from the economy, we should be looking at ways of reducing it in order to create the conditions for growth.  The whole debate is misconceived, pandering to envy of success, and can only harm the country's economic prospects instead of helping them.

The government will announce today the launch of its public consultation into minimum pricing. These consultations tend to be something of a charade—the Home Office has already said “We will introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol”—but in case you should wish to respond, here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons why minimum pricing is a terrible idea.

It is regressive

All indirect taxation is regressive, but minimum pricing is carefully calibrated to be as regressive as possible by targeting drinks that are disproportionately consumed by people on low incomes. Doctors on six figure salaries can rest assured that the champagne at the British Medical Association Christmas dinner will not be affected and the House of Commons bar will continue to be subsidised. Cheers!

Evidence is non-existent

As we reported on Monday, the excitable predictions about how many lives will be ‘saved’ by minimum pricing are based on a single computer model which uses dubious methods and false assumptions to come to a preordained conclusion. The truth is that nobody has any idea whether the policy will reduce alcohol-related harm. The only certainty is the majority of ordinary people will be out of pocket.

It’s just the start

Even minimum pricing’s most optimistic proponents admit that ratcheting up the price of drink is not a ‘silver bullet’.  What they mean is that minimum pricing will merely be the start of a sustained temperance campaign in the mould of the anti-smoking crusade. If the medical lobby is allowed to get its hands on one of the key levers of competition (price), we can expect endless demands for the minimum unit price to move upwards. David Cameron has proposed a 40p unit price but the British Medical Association are already demanding 50p. Others want it to be 60p. Whether alcohol consumption goes up or down, you can be sure that the ‘next logical step’ will be to have a minimum price escalator. Think of the children!

And why not? The same dodgy evidence can always be used to justify higher prices. The Sheffield computer model predicts that a 40p unit price will reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths by 10 per cent. At 70p, it claims the number of alcohol-related deaths will fall by more than 60 per cent! The model doesn’t go beyond 70p, alas, but presumably once it gets to 90p all alcohol harm is abolished and at 95p the dead begin to rise from the grave. What are we waiting for?

The moral panic is bogus

Since 2004, Britain has seen the sharpest and most sustained decline in alcohol consumption since the Second World War. The statistics are striking—less than half of 16-24 year olds have had even one drink each week; the proportion of young men who ‘binge-drink’ has fallen by more than 50 per cent; overall alcohol consumption is only slightly higher than it was in 1980. These facts are rather inconvenient for nanny-staters and so they have ignored them and pressed on with a narrative of ‘booze Britain’ that makes for better headlines. Trebles all round!

It is illegal

It’s rare to find the words ‘good news’ and ‘European Union’ in the same sentence, but the good news is that minimum pricing is illegal under European Union law. Previous attempts to limit the free market in this way have been rejected by the European Courts, such as in this judgement from 1978. Referring specifically to proposals to introduce minimum pricing in the UK, the European Commission has said that they “have a problem with the compatibility of the minimum pricing plans under Community law” and that it “causes problems with the compatibility with the EU Treaty”. Several wine-growing countries have already complained that minimum pricing is anti-competitive and, although David Cameron has vowed to fight the European Commission for his right to pick our pockets, if the EU does not stand for free trade between member states it stands for nothing at all.

It won’t help pubs

Winston Churchill said that "an appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last." A few of the pub chains have formed an unlikely, unseemly and unholy alliance with the forces of temperance in the hope that higher off trade prices will drag in some of the punters that the smoking ban drove out. This is a desperate gambit. Minimum pricing will not make beer any cheaper in pubs. It will merely make everybody a little bit poorer so they have less money to spend in pubs. On this occasion, Wetherspoons’ boss Tim Martin has called it right, saying that minimum pricing is “utter bollocks, basically.”