Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 28 January 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Context Phase
Professor Edward Kane:
They should focus on the notion of taxpayer equity. What is the value of taxpayer equity in a firm? Is it negligible and is it increasing? If is increasing, that is what we want to pick up. That would do a great job of measuring it at first. If whatever they are measuring is increasing, they know they will be flagging a problem before it gets to the severity we saw in 2008 and 2009.
anne flynn
Posted on 30 Jan 2015 11:13 am (Report this comment)
Quote from Former IMF fund economist...
Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren't "bought and paid for" by corporations, as in the US, he says. "Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions."
This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...