Many political pundits are upset over Brexit because they believe that Europe—the entire world, actually—needs more “harmonization” of financial regulators. They see Brexit as a threat to EU bureaucrats’ efforts to “police” global derivatives.
But why should Britain—or any other country for that matter—follow the same international blueprint that harmonized bank capital requirements? The Basel accords, first implemented in the late 1980s, completely missed the mark on account that international bureaucrats were wrong about pretty much everything.
Britain should ignore these voices, as well as those of anyone else preaching that forcing everyone to do exactly the same thing is a good idea. This kind of top-down standardization is bad in general, and particularly so in financial markets.
Britain should seize Brexit as an opportunity to break free from oppressive financial regulations. It should strive to be the place where global companies want to be, and where they want to invest.
Free enterprise works, and it works best with little government interference. Open markets and minimal regulation give more people chances to create wealth than does a highly regulated system.
There is nothing special about financial markets that falsifies this idea.
There is no doubt that politicians scare people into thinking financial markets need special regulations, but history shows how poorly such regulations work. The more rules they create, the more bureaucrats benefit at the expense of the private sector.
Trade in the EU provides a pretty clear picture of the problem.
One of the main reasons cited for creating the EU was to eliminate trade barriers, and that would have been great. But many goods, particularly consumer durables, are much more expensive (at least 25 percent) in just about any EU country than in the U.S.
Who benefits from those tariffs? Not the common man—the bureaucrat.
Again, the same principles can be applied to financial markets. With Britain out of the EU (and other countries likely following), Brussels gives up control, which is not what sustains bureaucracies.
Bureaucrats want more control over economic activity so that they can suck more money out of the private sector. Brexit endangers this job security.
A recent report in Politico pointed to many alleged practical difficulties that could prevent Brexit from relieving financial firms of regulatory burdens. For instance, that
in practice, a web of international rules, the EU’s unwillingness to allow London to benefit from the single market while outside the Union, and the tendency by Britain’s own regulators to lead—and often surpass—European standards mean that the City won’t be able to get out of the regulatory cage any time soon.
While there is no doubt that some practical difficulties exist, that is always the case with so-called cross-border harmonization of financial markets. What this statement really does is make the case for Brexit.
If the EU is unwilling to “allow” Britain to benefit from free trade in a common market, that market isn’t really open. All that the EU bureaucrats are doing is harming citizens in their member countries.
Furthermore, Britain hasn’t always led and surpassed EU standards, but it has been especially good at keeping FinTech firms lightly regulated. This is a particularly positive trend that incumbent firms will surely fight—hand in hand with EU regulators—in the name of harmonization and security.
Britain should tell the EU intelligentsia to take a hike, and it should start with financial regulators. Indeed, the U.S. should follow Britain’s lead.
The U.S. has been engaged in a fruitless harmonization effort of its own. In 2010, the Dodd–Frank Act created the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a sort of super-regulator compiled of existing agencies.
The FSOC—which is composed of all the U.S. regulators that completely slept through the coming of the 2008 crisis—has been working hand in hand with the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a mostly European group of central bankers and finance ministers.
The supposed goal of these organizations is to stamp out global financial risk, and harmonization of regulatory standards is high on their wish list.
The U.S. and the U.K. would be far better served if they strived to free their financial markets from oppressive and counterproductive regulations. Both countries should create capital markets that everyone wants to use, and they can’t do that if they remain on their current path.