OH HOW EASY it is to be wise after the event. The report of the Financial Services Consultative Consumer Panel (FSCCP) – there’s a mouthful – tells in ponderous language what any dog in the street has known for years: that credit was too easy to get and that banks pushing 100 per cent mortgages was risky.
This pedantic report has entered the Rumsfeld official-speak of “knowing what we’ve known”. It’s worth making a few points.
For instance, a cursory look over Central Bank reports since about 2007 shows a continuing criticism of 100 per cent mortgages and urges more stringent “stress tests” on loans for mortgages.
That these went unheeded is more a criticism of the lenders and bankers than of the Financial Regulator or Central Bank, as both lacked the legislative teeth at the time to enforce their concerns. Maybe each could have done more “arm-twisting” over a good lunch in a club, but anyone who knows senior bankers can hazard, correctly, the anticipated response from the “Rulers of the Universe” of the time.
Since then, the regulator has “retired” along with key figures in most of the banks who were so manic in lending and dismissive of the Central Bank strictures to become prudent.
Which brings us onto another predictable comment of the FSCCP – the replacement CEO of the Financial Regulator should be a “a person with a strong record of independent thinking ... used to facing down vested interests”.
Excuse us why we laugh, but could the authors of this report identify an individual of the above calibre who has been put in charge of a state body in this country, in recent memory?
