Related to my comments on Davos yesterday, here is another angle on the role of experts working in networks to produce global governance norms: David Zaring writes about the Basel Committee's stated goal "to strengthen banks' risk data aggregation capabilities and internal risk reporting practices," and he asks: Who helped them come up with the principles? His answer:
You might begin to answer that question by looking at the comment process. Who wrote in once the committee completed a draft of the principles and sent it around? It turns out that Basel kept a list:
British Bankers Association 39kb Canadian Bankers Association 368kb French Banking Federation 204kb Independent Data Professionals Group 788kb International Banking Federation 250kb Jacques Préfontaine 21kb Japanese Bankers Association 74kb JWG 257kb Polish Financial Sepervision Authority 443kb
Prefontaine is a Canadian professor, and JWG a beltway bandit/think tank. So, in other words, other than the Poles, this is a comment process dominated by banking industry groups. Basel has not in the past radically changed its rules during the comment process (though it changes them some), and I'm glad the committee is no longer operating entirely in secret. But it does show that the new openness in international financial regulation isn't being exploited by everyone.
Interesting observations about transparency and accountability in governance when governance occurs offshore in networks of experts and interested parties.
One of the worst things that I heard at the Pepperdine tax conference was when the young people were told that FATCA was their employment future.
ReplyDeleteA tax system that operates as a jobs program is just as counter productive to man's economic well being as is a militarized society. In America these are probably two of the biggest drags on its economic performance.
Complicated tax regimes are a waste of intellectual effort. I am more convinced that a simplified VAT and user fees are the best way to go with the complete scrapping of tax on any form of income.