Making Sense of The Policy Debate Inside The Financial Market

There is no shortage of opinion in the market today on the current state of affairs of the global economy and most of the commentary as well as analysis seem to be centred around Central banks policies and its overall current impact assessment and on how things may play out going forward. The discussions are generally focused on what the central banks especially the Federal Reserve System (aka the Federal Reserve ) did do and didn’t do during the financial crisis of 2008 and in the immediate aftermath and also what it should have been done instead among other things.

So during a conference call to discuss a deal, I managed to get myself into a what I would probably classify now as a silly debate on phone with two of my dear analyst friends in wall-street. It was quite evident from our conversation that  both of them had pretty strong opinion on one central banker in particular and I won’t say it’s shocking to learn how some folks create and form an immediate opinion on someone based on mostly what other market practitioners are saying or have said for that matter but what does surprise me is when people fail to realise that markets are run by human ideas and not all Ideas are good. It is good to have different ideas along with different perspective and we can always agree to disagree and but what we shouldn’t do is dismiss everything simply because it doesn’t fit with our own school of thoughts.

The reality is most of us do not have the essential or required foresight to accurately predict or map out the outcome of the implementation of an idea, strategy or decisions we are going to make but we do know that we can’t necessarily FIX today’s problems by applying tools of the past. And the financial crisis of 08 can’t be compared to other crises before it so fixing it will require a new approach and application of new tools. But the problem is we also live in a different era, a 24 x 7 world where any and every decision a policy maker takes will get scrutinised instantly and people pouring in with opinions expecting instant results without realising that a policy needs to go through a policy cycle in order to be fit for impact analysis. The market tends to carry out an instant autopsy right at the birth and sometimes even before an idea or a policy is fully conceived. And yes there are situations where initial debates are quintessential and do help in formulating good policies.

This crisis has been a breeding ground for learning and testing ideas. And unlike many of my friends I haven’t yet made an opinion on the decisions taken by Mr Ben Shalom Bernanke as I believe it is a bit early to carry out a full and comprehensive assessment and analysis of each and every policy decisions taken by the top central banks especially the Federal Reserve Bank of United States. Also it will be unwise to formulate a clear opinion on the type of legacy Mr Ben Shalom Bernanke as the chairman of the FED will leave behind. We will have to wait and see. And to those who are extremely eager to write their version of immediate history I would say this, where is the logic and common sense behind a person writing an auto biography at age 21 when you know you may end up looking like a complete idiot at the age of 65. As human beings we are never a finished item.

Whatever may become of Mr Ben Shalom Bernanke’s legacy, he has clearly been one of the most proactive central banker who made bold and conscious decisions to get ahead of the crisis and to add to that I would say that I have more faith in him than his house mate at Winthrop house in Harvard, Mr Lloyd Blankfein. Also his policy decisions will most likely keep many student of economics around the world busy for some time to come.

In order to make sense of a policy and policy decisions you do need to spend time on understanding the person or people behind the policies. It is important to look at the bigger picture and develop a better understanding of how that person or a group of people think and react in a given or different situations, how they make specific decisions and why, what is their thought process, what are their priorities, what is their understanding of a particular situation and what are they trying to achieve among other things. The ability to fully grasp a situation differs from people to people.

We live in a Facebook world where most of us tend to post and share our thoughts before it had a chance to fully develop or evolve and the same goes for policy making. A fully developed policy idea takes time to evolve but since most policy decisions during the crisis were made against a ticking clock they were generally half-baked ideas so there will obviously be some uncertainty around them which may cause or continue to create volatility in the market. And it is highly likely that most policy makers including of Mr Ben Bernanke are probably keeping their fingers crossed and hoping things will work out well eventually and history will be kind on them but we are not there yet.