by Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini
Between the fall of 2008 and the winter of 2009, the world's economy and financial markets fell off a cliff. Stock markets in the United States, Asia, Europe and Latin America lost between a third and half of their value; international trade declined by a whopping 12 percent; and the size of the global economy contracted for the first time in decades.
When economists and Wall Street types toss around the term "systemic risk," that's pretty much what they're talking about. The particular risks that led to the crisis -- i.e., big institutions with too much leverage, too little capital and too many implicit and explicit government guarantees -- were not impossible to anticipate. (In fact, some of us warned about the financial pandemic that was to come.) Now, the question is: How do we keep this all from happening again?
To create a truly safe financial system, we have to focus on two goals. First, we have to drive a stake through the heart of the "too big to fail" mantra that only fattens our financial beasts. Second, we should stop focusing on the problems of individual banks and look at the broader risk that the largest and most complex financial institutions pose.
For the full opinion editorial in Sunday's April 11th Washington Post, please go to the following link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/08/AR2010040805132.html
