Speaking the truth in order to lie

You may know that there is an annual political, economic and business confab of elites that takes place each year in Davos, Switzerland.  The World Economic Forum is a place for powerful people to coordinate actions on a global scale.  And to shape public perception of issues.

At this year’s conference, Gary Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs has called on more regulation of the hedge fund industry.  Something I am in total agreement with.  In response to these comments the president and chief executive of the hedge fund trade association, the Managed Funds Association, Richard Baker said:

“…Hedge funds are regulated. We didn’t cause the financial crisis. We didn’t take bail-out money…The most recent financial crisis was caused by institutions that didn’t know how to adequately manage risk and were over-leveraged. And I worry that if there is another crisis, it will be because the same institutions have failed to learn from the mistakes of the past.”

All of these statements by Baker are factually accurate.  However, the lie present in his statement is that no single regulator had access to the obscurities taking place within the entire hedge fund industry.  That meant that the, “institutions that didn’t know how to adequately manage risk and were over-leveraged” helped to almost take down the global financial system because regulators couldn’t see the intricacies of the problem.

Imagine putting a guard dog in charge of watching your entire collection of chicken coops but insisting on only having a blind dog?  Yes, it’s true that the wolves are the ones that eat the chickens, but what about the idiocy of insisting on a blind watch dog?

This is the heart of what I mean when I say that Mr. Baker is speaking the truth in order to lie.  Don’t be fooled folks, as long as there are wolves you want watch dogs that can see.

Jason