Is development always good? Not if you ask metropolitan planners dedicated to livable cities, open up space preservationsists, or economists who question the logic of systems that rely on growth but that are baed on finite resources. Once we take into account the philanthropic infrastructure metaphor, we should stop and question some of our most basic assumptions. Is more better always? Do established entities reap a return from subsidzing services to new entrants?
As information systems change, towns are reconsidering the investments they make in utilities, roads, public transport, sewer and schools systems. Do you need to run phone wires outside city lines when everyone can use cellular technology instead? Should cities build broadband loops for their business districts or residents? These urban infrastructures are given as public goods, covered in part by all taxpayers and in part by the developers/homeowners whose new demands on the machine make sure they are necessary. But who really benefits so when? And who gets to make decisions in what services should be provided still?
You want us to go out and protect consumers, well of course that’s a good objective, but that’s not our mandate. I think that what Paulson and Nason wish to accomplish is to make a separate business conduct agency that is targeted at consumer safety. So, it might be working parallel with these other agencies to – but their job would be to represent the buyer and that appears like smart to me. The thing I stressed in my own column was the market stability regulator, which is the Fed.
- Payment of small company pension plan start-up costs
- MBI International
- Hedging volatility
- A plan to transfer property via presents, trusts and wills as appropriate
- IT: Projects Delivered/On-Time
What they would like to do is broaden the actions of the Fed, so that they’re not – you can describe the Federal Reserve or any central bank or investment company, typically, as a banker’s bank or investment company. Remember, I informed you the storyplot of how the first – the lender of England was the first central bank or investment company and it made banks keep debris at the Bank of England. The Fed hasn’t given loans to anyone other a depository institution that is a bank or investment company until last month, except they did so in the Depression.
There was this long space in the 1930s; the Fed was making loans to private companies that were not banks and then they halted doing that, until last month. They created the – it was mentioned by me last time, the word Securities Lending Facility and the principal Dealers Credit Facility, which are lending outside the banking system.
What Paulson wants to do is make that official that the Fed is no more simply a central bank or investment company; it’s a market stability regulator. This is going to be very questionable, but I think it’s a very important thing to raise. For me, this is the trend anyway and I think we’re going that way.