If bankers become overly conservative in response to past lending mistakes - or if examiners force such behavior - it will hurt bankers' own long-term interests and the economy in general.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It would not be a bad idea if bankers were to go and sit occasionally with politicians in their political surgeries, where they might get a sense of the injustice that some of the community feel about the banks.
One of the risks for anybody in the lending business is that being conservative can harm your competitiveness.
I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.
Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.
Bankers cannot afford to be concerned with only the economic aspects of projects. There may be serious implications on the natural environment, the urban environment, on human culture.
Changing much-cherished bank secrecy laws is worth the effort. Corruption, tax evasion, and the capture of natural resource revenues undermine the rule of law, weaken the social fabric, erode citizens' trust in institutions, fuel conflict and insecurity, and hamper job creation.
The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.
Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.
Whether or not you have good consumer protection has a big effect on safety and soundness of the banking community, especially smaller banks.
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