The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) recently published a Working Paper by William White. He argues that changes to international financial regulations, post the 2008 crisis,were undoubtedly useful but still fall short of taming global “boom-bust” credit cycles. A macrofinancial stability framework, in which both monetary and macroprudential instruments were used to “lean against the wind” of credit booms, would seem the minimum requirement to achieve the desired objective. This should likely be complemented by other measures designed to change the behaviour of market participants (including higher capital requirements)and also the structure of markets themselves. White also notes the shortcomings of individual regulatory changes, and refers to concerns raised about their coherence as a package. The paper concludes with a brief overview of more radical solutions for change suggested in the literature (eg, Free Banking and Narrow Banking) and a final observation. The current International Monetary (Non)System imposes no international discipline to mitigate national tendencies to excessive credit creation.
