Regulators ignore hard facts to pick off easy prey

摘要

Banks failed in the recent crisis because they lent money to the wrong people - sometimes done by way of complicated structures but bad credits all the same - and because they were undercapitalised.rnThese bald facts seem to have been lost sight of as a plethora of new regulations hits the statute books in both the US and Europe, with a lot more on the way.rnMany deal with hobby horses of particular legislators, such as the focus on swaps in the US at the bidding of senator Blanche Lincoln; other initiatives deal with areas of finance that are easy pickings for politicians, such as private equity and hedge funds, but which were not themselves instrumental in causing the crisis.