Everything must go
GOODBYE to much more. Goodbye, I suppose, to deregulation — the vogue word for removing the barriers from finan- cial markets, and opening them up to new participants, national and international. The vogue had passed in London, where (as Lord Limerick, of Kleinwort Benson, was saying the other day) we are now getting the most comprehensive system of regulation ever devised. More, surely, follows. Henry Kaufman, of Salomon Brothers has called for a world board of overseers — the International Securities Fund? The World Broker? Goodbye to some of the more elaborate financial in- struments which have suddenly cost their devisers and purchasers so dear. (Merrill Lynch devised a specially clever one, tem- porarily lost control of it earlier this year, and lost $377 million as well.) Goodbye, or at least a cool wave, to the indiscriminate vogue for turning every kind of obligation into a tradeable security. Hello again to the old-fashioned preference for having a bank in the middle of the transaction, taking some of the risk. Goodbye to the com- panies (not all of them Japanese) which thought that playing the stock markets was the quickest way to swell their profits. Goodbye to projections of a global equity market continuing to grow at this year's pace, to the belief that government the world over can force-feed that market with privatised shares and never spoil its appe- tite. Goodbye, here in London, to some jobs, and more bonuses, to the good things they bought and the prices (houses, res- taurants, racehorses, pictures) they in- flated. A long farewell to all that.
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