Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Getting nasty as a regulator

Again, from David Leonhardt:

It [Canada] relies more on blunt rules than the United States does. Canada requires any mortgage with a less than 20 percent down payment to be insured, and those mortgages are much less common there. It also sets a standard leverage ratio of no more than 20. As Julie Dickson, the chief financial regulator in Canada, told me, “We become nasty when banks get close to it.”

What does becoming nasty mean? Do the CEOs get waterboarded? Do the banks get nationalized? Does Ms. Dickson don her dominatrix outfit and get the CEOs to lick her boots?

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