Kraises

Un muy buen análisis de la actual crisis financiera en Clarín... eh, digo... aquí, de Larry Kudlow:

Obama is on the campaign trail predictably charging that a lack of regulations during the Bush era is responsible for the current mess. But he's misreading history. As George Mason economist Tyler Cowen wrote in The New York Times, one of the problems with the U.S. financial system is not a lack of regulation, but a lack of smart and effective regulation.

During the Bush years, financial regulations increased exponentially, beginning with the misbegotten Sarbanes-Oxley act. That put accountants and lawyers in the driver's seat rather than entrepreneurs. And it turns out that neither the Fed, the FDIC, the comptroller of the currency, nor the SEC properly supervised high-risk leveraged borrowings and the capital-adequacy ratios necessary to safeguard against losses. Accounting standards need reform, especially the notion of fair value. Economist David Malpass wants to throw out mark-to-market altogether. He has a good point.

Then there's Congress, led by Democrats in the last two years and Republicans before that, that mandated substandard lending to low-income groups. And as the high-risk loans mounted, this very same Congress -- under the gun of political contributions -- continued to promote the excesses of lenders, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

There are many more issues wound up in all this. But one thing's for sure. Keeping tax rates low, holding back cheap-money inflation, strengthening the dollar and building a more effective regulatory structure that does not stifle free enterprise is what will promote long-run economic prosperity. For optimists like myself, the plunge in oil and gas pump prices is already producing a sizable tax-cut effect, planting the seeds of recovery for mortgage-holding consumers and everyone else.