Daily Archives: April 28, 2014

The New Book on Regulation I Just Decided to Write: Blame it on Monaco

By William K. Black

This is the third article in a series of columns devoted to financial regulation prompted by the comments of a Swiss academic at the XIIth Annual CIFA Forum in Monaco. (See first here and second here.)

Having spent 20 years as a non-academic professional, I still find it odd the directions in which a single speaker or writer can start an academic on a convoluted path of research that spans multiple disciplines and eras and produces a series of “light bulb” analytical moments. And that prompts a digression into a symptom of the problem illuminated by that series of moments that has led me to decide to write a book on regulation.

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Why Did George Kaufman, the Father of “Prompt Corrective Action” (PCA), Hate Ed Gray so Much that He Opposed Gray’s Embrace of PCA?

By William K. Black

This is the second installment of a series arising from my recent participation in CIFA’s XIIth Annual International Forum in Monaco.  The series was prompted by Dr. Hans Geiger’s rage at financial regulation in Europe – not at its pathetic weakness that produced the criminogenic environments through much of the Eurozone, but at the proposal that Swiss banks be required to make criminal referrals when they found evidence of likely criminality by their customers.  This inspired me to wonder why a requirement that has existed in the U.S. for over 30 years would lead to such raw animus against “bureaucrats” serving “big brother” (i.e., the democratically elected Swiss government).

Geiger is a member of the European Shadow Financial Regulation Commission, which I will call the “EU Shadow” for the sake of brevity.  I am familiar with the US Shadow.  There are interesting (if you are a fellow wonk) articles by members of the EU Shadow about its creation and its conception of what it intends to achieve and how it will do so.  I will refer to the 2004 article by the EU Shadow’s chairman, Harald A. Benink.

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