Berghs betraktelser

Larry Kotlikoff i Milken Review svarar tydligt nej:

What happened to those stringent capital adequacy stress tests that would spot and fix troubled banks well before they began to fail?

In short, Dodd-Frank was based on a misconception. It fundamentally works by limiting the amount banks can borrow without equity backstops. But you can’t be a little bit leveraged any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. The stress tests in their most stringent form assumed that 15 percent bank capital would be more than adequate. This means a bank can borrow $1 and invest 85 cents of it at risk. Consequently, if the bank suffers a 15 percent or greater loss on its assets, the bank is broke.

Viviana A. Zelizer är sociolog och författare till boken "The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies" (Princeton University Press). I NYT skriver hon om hur människor (i USA) pga pandemin (kombinationen av stimulanser och restriktioner som innebar mindre att lägga pengarna på) gjorde att många fick pengar över. Resultatet blev ökade gåvor, donationer och välgörenhet - till stor del med hjälp av ny teknik som PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Cash App och crowdfundingsajter som GoFundMe.

Men kanske, spekulerar Zelizer, bidrog även det faktum att viruset kunde drabba alla:

But neither technology nor economics can fully explain why, amid financial uncertainty and physical peril, people would part with their money. Why give money away, even without an urgent immediate need for funds? Why not just save it?

Because in our bizarre pandemic world, money served as an unexpected social bridge. After all, despite the profound class, race and gender disparities of the pandemic, everyone became physically vulnerable. This created a collective trauma that did not exist in the 2008 financial crisis and may have resulted in greater solidarity. Heads of government, movie stars and other prominent figures got Covid-19, as did people’s friends, family and colleagues.

En metafundering: Det är inte var dag man kan läsa en kulturartikel av en sociolog som skriver om pengar och ny teknik - utan att texten dryper av den sedvanliga anti-kapitalistiska deklinismen.

Relaterat: Jag deltog i Filosofiska Rummet i p1 häromveckan. Kan avnjutas (?) här. Tema: Pengarna eller livet?

(Tack till Nonicoclosasos för tips om Zelizers artikel)