Article from Brisbane Courier Mail Newspaper 10.21.99

Reserve bank of Australia Deputy Governor Steven Grenville said yesterday in a speech to the World Economic forum...Dr Grenville said the private sector should bear the consequences of potentially risky investments by being forced to "bail in" rather than "bail out". "We need to look at the question of bailing in,in other words,making it harder for people to take their money out quickly as they did during the Asian crisis.This would also address the issue of moral hazard."

-- (joe blow@no_ go.net), October 21, 1999

Answers

Which begs the question: Who is the banker of last resort?

-- Helium (Heliumavid@yahoo.com), October 21, 1999.

The depositor of course.

-- Will (sibola@hotmail.com), October 22, 1999.

Mr. Grenville is wrong. The problem is not fast money flows. Money flows serve a purpose: they discern good investments from bad and reward the good investments.

The main problem regarding worldwide financial investments is that governments are forcing taxpayers to bail out bad investments through the IMF, World Bank, Loan Forgiveness, etc. The institutions who make bad investments should be made to bear the full cost of bad investment decisions, then a lot of foolish investment decisions will be avoided, and taxpayers will not be held liable for bankers who gambled and lost.

-- Rick (rick7@postmark.net), October 22, 1999.