by MD » Thu 19 Jun 2008, 18:39:42
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pup55', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat suggestions would people have for fixing the world financial system
Piece of cake.
1. Require an audit of every financial institution that has mortgage debt on its books, and require an honest appraisal of the book value of the loan portfolio, to whatever extent it can now be determined. The CEO and any officers of any institution that fails to do this should be marched to the nearest jail. Repeat this process every quarter, to allow for changes in the marketplace.
2. Start conducting audits of any mortgage brokers that have sold mortgages for the last five years, and identify any retail brokers, managers, or other corporate officers that have been found to deliberately falsify mortgage applications. These individuals and their managers must forfeit all bonuses, commissions and fat salaries associated with this, and also be marched to the nearest jail.
3. The CEO, the officers, and managers of any bond ratings institutions (such as S and P or Moody's) that gave this financial offal a AAA rating should also be marched off to the nearest jail, and made to forfeit all bonuses and salaries accumulated by this shady practice.
4. The institutions involved in (1) above must write down their portfolio (mark to market) to accurately represent its value to the financial community and their stockholders. Failure to do this should result in the CEO's being marched to jail.
5. Once steps 1-4 have been enacted, thus cleansing the system of all of the assholes, and restoring the confidence of the investing public in this system, put into effect some standardized loan qualification process, by which qualified borrowers can get access to money, and mooches cannot. This should be fairly straightforward.
6. Any politician found to have received "campaign contributions" from this system, and thus failing to regulate it, should be removed from office immediately.
7. Interest rates need to be raised to adequately compensate the lenders for the risks currently involved in the system. At the moment, no one wants to loan anyone any money, because rates are too low, no one knows what anything is worth, and the ratings systems that ostensibly were supposed to identify the level of risk were fraudulently manipulated. If you fix these three factors (steps 1-4) it ought to be possible to start up the system and have people be confident in the investment.
8. Any bank or financial institutions that fail based on 1-4 above need to be allowed to collapse, the officers arrested for malfeasance, and the stockholders not compensated for the failure. Any boards of directors of these institutions, whose responsibility it should have been to safeguard the shareholders, should be banned for life from being on another board, and a special court set up so that stockholders can sue the directors and officers for malfeasance in some speedy, expeditious way.
9. Any foreclosed home that is not occupied within 90 days of foreclosure must be bulldozed, the wreckage hauled off, and salt plowed into the ground, like the Romans did to Carthage. This activity should be paid for out of the fines from the officers in 1-4 above. Ideally, the officers themselves should be forced to do difficult manual labor on this. Zoning laws must be enacted to prevent any new suburban development until the existing vacant lots are built out.
That's all I can think of for now. Anyway, it's a good start. Before too long, the system will be detoxified, and we can start fresh in a way that gives lenders and borrowers, wherever they may be, some confidence that the system is honest, and correctly represents the risks.
I'm not sure the system would survive the surgery, but the alternatives aren't looking
better, at this point.