Excessive Optimism Sows The Seeds

The Use Of A Growing Array Of Derivatives And The Related Application Of More-sophisticated Approaches To Measuring And Managing Risk Are Key Factors Underpinning The Greater Resilience Of Our Largest Financial Institutions... Derivatives Have Permitted The Unbundling Of Financial Risks.

It's Hard To Overemphasize How Important Ford's Deregulation Was. True, Most Of The Benefits Took Years To Unfold-rail Freight Rates, For Example Hardly Budged At First. Yet Deregulation Set The Stage For An Enormous Wave Of Creative Destruction In The 1980s.

Clearly, Sustained Low Inflation Implies Less Uncertainty About The Future, And Lower Risk Premiums Imply Higher Prices Of Stocks And Other Earning Assets. We Can See That In The Inverse Relationship Exhibited By Price/earnings Ratios And The Rate Of Inflation In The Past. But How Do We Know When Irrational Exuberance Has Unduly Escalated Asset Values, Which Then Become Subject To Unexpected And Prolonged Contractions As They Have In Japan Over The Past Decade?

We May Be In A Rapidly Evolving International Financial System With All The Bells And Whistles Of The So-called New Economy. But The Old-economy Rules Of Prudence Are As Formidable As Ever. We Violate Them At Our Own Peril.

The Very Nature Of Finance Is That It Cannot Be Profitable Unless It Is Significantly Leveraged... And As Long As There Is Debt, There Can Be Failure And Contagion.