No tan monstruo como creía

Eugene Fama, premio Nobel, en una entrevista para el NYT, se muestra muy, pero que muy realista sobre los mercados y la política social. Reflejo aquí sus opiniones sobre la regulación y la intervención en la crisis, que no rechaza, sino que que dice que es mejor nacionalizar la banca, sanearla, y venderla de nuevo. Totalmente de acuerdo.

Do you believe in financial regulation?

Of course, some regulation, yes. You need a level playing field, you need the government to step in sometimes. But I think we’ve gone too far with Dodd-Frank.

In the financial crisis, do you think the government should have bailed out the big banks?

No, I don’t. I would’ve favored nationalizing the banks, not bailing them out.

Really? That’s not very libertarian, is it?

Well, we’re talking about realistic alternatives. It’s not credible that in a financial crisis, the government will do nothing. It never has. There are going to be demands for it to do something. So you’ve got two choices now. Nationalize them or bail them out. Bailing them out gives them terrible disincentives; it encourages them to take risks because they’ll be bailed out. So I’d nationalize them — and clean them up and then reprivatize them.

So would you have favored that the government do nothing at all?

I said at the time that it would be an interesting experiment. But what people argue is that it would be quite destructive, that it would create long-term problems. We don’t know that that’s true, but I think it’s kind of moot because it’s not an experiment that’s ever going to be run.