Mises Wire

Less Regulation Through More Central Planning?

Less Regulation Through More Central Planning?

New Yorkers refuse to believe that they are losing their place as the center of the financial world.

Released last month, the MasterCard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index, an analysis of the desirability of conducting business in 63 cities, ranks London number one based on six dimensions including the ease of doing business, financial flow — in which it trounces New York in the categories of bond trading and derivatives contracts — and economic stability. ..."This is the central city," Goldstein said. "Frankfurt and London and Dubai and so forth are suburbs."

Is this more typical New York arrogance? Sure, in Thomas Friedman language, the world is indeed getting more flat as global markets come into play. But that does not negate the fact that the US regulatory environment and the government's oppressive "war on terror" are turning away business opportunities. In the US, businesses have to bear far too much in the way of hardship and costs due to Sarbanes-Oxley, post-9/11 Homeland Security totalitarianism, iron-fisted securities laws, endless litigation to "protect" the investor, and the stringent and uncooperative system of accounting standards which are rules-based (as opposed to being principles-based).

The suggested "prescriptions" to keep New York the hub of the financial world are, for starters, to establish a National Commission on Financial Services Competitiveness in order to assess what needs to be done to make US markets more competitive. Then Mayor Bloomberg would "establish a public/private joint venture to promote competitiveness" wherein Bloomberg would "collaborate with business interests and appoint a chairman to act as a national and international ambassador on behalf of the local financial services sector."

More central planning from powermongering New York elites is not the answer to unburdening businesses from the regulatory nets that have them gagged and bound. But getting the central planners, their committies, their national commissions, and their corporatist friends on Wall Street out of the picture is a small start if we wish to see the financial markets untethered from the tyrants who have seized control and are strangling economic growth.

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