Chairman, both responded to, and shaped, those emerging trends. This is an essayof considerable (historical)
importance because it outlines in depth what the Basel Committee saw itself doing in the middle of the last decade.
As Tommaso records, growth of confidence in market capitalism leads to growth of confidence in the inherent
disciplinaryfunctions of markets. That naturallyleads on to the question of whythe banking system should be subject
to anyspecific external, officiallyimposed regulation at all. Indeed, there is a large bodyof thought, thoughflourishing
in North America rather than in Europe, that would challenge the rationale for the whole paraphernalia of official
regulation.
Tommaso seeks to respond to the question,‘whyregulate?’also in the next essay, and the replies to that question also
help to shape the answers to the associated question,‘how to regulate?’In Essay2, on licensing banks, he addresses an
American audience on the continuing need to authorise and to regulate banks. In this he develops some analytical ideas
that are, I believe, an important and original contribution to the intellectual debate in thisfield. In myview this is a key
essay, perhaps the best in the book. Precisely because he was aware that he was speaking to a somewhat sceptical, even
possiblyhostile, audience, Tommaso took a special care to marshal his arguments with particular logic, force, and
brilliance.
In this essay, Tommaso emphasises a pyramidical formation of liquidity provision within thefinancial system. The
central bank, at the apex, is the ultimate supplier of liquidity, with‘licensed banks—as lenders of“next-to-last”
resort—on the second level and various non-bankfinancial institutions on the third level’, (see Section 2.1). A bank is
defined byits function of providing instantaneous liquidityboth on its liabilityside, via sight and demand deposits, and
on its asset side, via loans to the non-bank private sector. Interlinkages between banks, in the payments system,
through the moneymarkets, and via macroeconomic developments, make the collection of individual banks into a
banking system, in a way in which we would never think of an automobile or steel-producing industry system, or, say, a
restaurant system. In banking, as in other industries, there is a need to reinforce competition, and, because of
asymmetric information, to protect poorly informed customers. But what is special about banks is the potentiality for
systemic risk, a particular form of externality. Tommaso goes on to assert that there is unlikely to be a contagious crisis
unless it does involve the banking system (see Section 2.3).
1
So, the need both to license, and then to regulate banks,
follows from the interaction of their keyrole as liquidityproviders and their (associated) exposure to systemic risk.
Essay3, on competition in banking, succinctlydescribes the trends infinancial regulation that have dominated over the
last fortyor so years, effectivelyour own
FOREWORD xiii
1
I have some small reservations here. Anyset offinancial intermediaries with liabilities which can be withdrawn onfixed nominal (or real) terms held against assets of variable
market value can suffer runs. The decline in (equity) asset prices in 2002 in the UK caused large numbers of life insurance policy-holders to try to switch policies from
supposedly less to more solvent companies. A full academic analysis has yet to be done, but it may well have been the ability of such life insurance companies to impose quite
severe penalties on such earlywithdrawals that prevented anymajor and systemicallydamaging runs from developing here.