Oder:
Waren die pauschalen Bürgschaften für die angeschlagenen Banken wie HRE die optimale Krisenmaßnahme?
Chris hat mich in seinem Kommentar zu meinem C4-Reis-Artikel erinnert, dass ich für eine kontrollierte Insolvenz der HRE (Hypo Real Estate) war.
🙂 Auch dazu stehe ich.
Ich bin überzeugt, dass eine staatliche kontrollierte Insolvenz gepaart mit einer differenzierten Bürgschaft für relevante Teilfelder der Bank der bessere Weg gewesen wäre. Man hätte zumindest durch die Insolvenz einiges an aus dem Ruder gelaufenen Strukturen sehr viel eleganter und billiger verändern können als mit einer Pauschalbürgschaft für alle Gläubiger der Bank.
Gesetzliche Einschränkungen für ein solches Vorgehen hätte man in der kritischen Phase sicher durch entsprechende Gesetzesänderungen beheben können.
Selbst wenn die Mehrheit der Beteiligten das erfolgte Vorgehen als richtig bezeichnet, muss es noch lange nicht richtig sein. Und gerade solche folgenschweren Entscheidungen einfach als alternativlos darzustellen, ist zu einfach.
Mir ist es wichtig, dass man den Mut hat, auch solche Themen zu hinterfragen und auch hier gegen den Strom zu schwimmen. Und was dazu kommt: ich kenne mehr als einen angesehenen Insolvenzverwalter und Wirtschaftsprüfer, die diese Bewertung teilen.
Deshalb ist es ignorant, solche Maßnahmen einfach als richtig ab zu haken, nur weil eine politische Mehrheit sich geeinigt hat, dass das Vorgehen in der „Krise“ richtig war. Vielmehr vermisse ich eine Übung „Lessons learned“, die das Krisenmanagement analysiert und nach optimalen Lösungen sucht. Immerhin scheinen wir so wenig aus der Vergangenheit gelernt zu haben, dass ein hohes Risiko besteht, dass ähnliche Ereignisse sich in nicht allzu großer Ferne wiederholen!
RMD
Wird geladen ...
3 Antworten
As I remember, Roland was in favour of generally letting banks go bust. Now he hints that he meant only HRE.
Perhaps he has forgotten that the day after the Lehman crash, queues of alert people started to form outside other banks, trying to get their money out. Of course there was nowhere enough cash to give to everybody. I can hardly imagine the chaos if further large banks had gone bust. Very many would have, as they were all linked together, owing paper from each other.
USA did things more brutally. Dozens of small banks there have gone bust. This may be cheaper for the average taxpayer, but many poor people have lost their savings. The USA economy has gone down so much more than the European Community that the total wealth of USA is less than that of the EC, for the first time. The Euro has stayed more stable than the dollar, and we have had only a moderate rise in unemployment; All this although USA now has one of their best Presidents ever. Of course we can expect bad news soon after the vote, but it does suggest that Europe did something right. The world’s most valuable bank is now HSBC (England). Some big American banks are now worth little.
I also hate to think of the chaos resulting from Roland’s proposed law changes. Germany has too many laws. Nobody can keep in touch with them all. There is a reflex here to change the law, when anything unusual happens, (e.g. the Solln S-Bahn murder). Laws that are slowly constructed are often botched. Any law put together in such an urgent situation would certainly be a mess.
Of course insolvency managers are in favour of insolvency. It is their job, just as programmers are in favour of computers. Bookkeepers and entrepreneurs are also not the right experts. Economists, politicians and even historians are better qualified. Of course I do not belong to any of these professions, but at least I have time to think things through, in contrast to Roland, who has more hobbies and interests than anybody else that I know. The trouble with economists and historians is that they are under too little pressure to get their predictions right. They mostly just explain things afterwards. Politicians need to make decisions soon enough.
I resent the hint that I lack the courage to swim against the stream. I am an atheist in Bavaria. Also, I regard neither religion nor humanism as a satisfactory source of ethics (see https://www.if-blog.de/en/cw/ethik-nach-dem-humanismus/), which is a very unusual stance.
I also do not agree that I have accepted what happened out of ignorance. I am certainly worried that we are moving towards the next crash. I see the solution in terms of banks being limited as regards lending what they do not really have. The limits may well be different in different countries. People then need to be aware which banks are safer. I tended to invest in shares in firms where I knew what they were doing. I did not do very well, but I was less likely to lose everything. The whole business of financial markets is too complex for normal (all?) people, and advice from „experts“ is generally bad. This spills over into the problem that managers have huge power over other people’s money. The owners of banks are unable to judge which top managers are working badly, until it is too late. Roland is an honourable exception, combining ownership and (still) management, but with few exceptions this is only possible in small firms. The family firm also has the problem that the offspring my well not be the best people to take over.
Chris hat Recht. Ich meine immer noch, dass Banken auch nicht anders behandelt werden sollten als ganz normale Firmen! Übrigens sollte das auch für Unternehmen gelten, die Automobile erstellen.
Roland was right about one aspect of my courage. I have not the courage to get things wrong. This is one thing that makes me more boring than he is. I may try to improve.