Anat Admati och Martin Hellwig har ett läsvärt utdrag ur deras nya bok på Bloomberg om hur banker behandlas på samma sätt som kejsaren i H.C. Andersens saga: okritiskt och underdånigt.
“Banks have a similar mystique. There is a pervasive myth that banks are different — special, somehow — from all other companies and industries in the economy. Anyone who questions this is at risk of being declared incompetent.
In fact, many claims made by leading bankers and banking experts, including academics, have as much substance as the emperor’s new clothes. But most people don’t challenge these claims, even as the claims affect policy. The specialists’ confidence is too intimidating. Even people who know better fail to speak up. The public is taken in.”
Vilket får mig att tänka på den globala elitens årliga firmafest i Davos som nyligen avslutades. Här är en beskrivning av tillställningen som jag tänkte länka till men sedan glömde bort. The Unbearable Vanity of Davos
“Davos, in short, is magnificently seductive, a monument to man’s need for self-actualization. (And it is mostly men—women only make up 17% of the elite participants at Davos, though they are 60% of WEF staff.) But does it improve the state of the world? Hardly. When you consider the lifestyle of those taking part, starting with the private jets, it is really quite an achievement for them to keep their cognitive dissonance in check for the better part of a week.
Perhaps the license to pretend is part of the modern-day Davos therapy. “Schwab discovered along the way that saving the world is really quite hard work,” one longtime conference-goer said to me last year. “Vanity is much easier to sell.”