UNITED
NATIONS/NYC,
May 19 -- Why
did it take so
long for
someone to
write an
investigative
book about the
Basel
Committee on
Banking
Supervision
and Bank for
International
Settlements?
Henry
Morgenthau
tried to
close down the
BIS in 1945
for having
collaborated
with the
Nazis.
While
it doesn't
seem to have
been what
triggered
author Adam
Lebor's
interest in
Basel, the
subprime
financial
meltdown since
2008
certainly
makes how and
on what issues
global bank
regulation is
directed a
matter of more
general
concern.
If
the central
bankers who
meet every two
months in
Basel had been
concerned for
the lower
income people
being targeted
with high cost
mortgages, it
is possible
that
Countrywide,
Ameriquest and
CitiFinancial
which made the
loans, and
Lehman
Brothers,
Merrill
Lynch and
Citigroup
which were
among the
largest
securitizers,
would
not have
failed or
required huge
bailouts.
Lebor,
whose seven
previous
non-fiction
books include
one
criticizing
the UN
for its role
in Srebrenica
and elsewhere,
runs through
the history of
Basel and its
past and
present lack
of
transparency
in his "Tower
of Basel,"
officially out
in June from
PublicAffairs.
In
a perfunctory
hat-tip to
social media,
the Bank has a
twitter
account
@bis_org,
whose 13,000
followers
Lebor cites
while noting
that all
tweets are to
already
publicly
available
documents like
speeches.
This from, as
Lebor's
subtitle has
it, "The
Secret Bank
that
Runs the
World."
What
if the Basel
Committee on
Banking
Supervision,
even now, were
to set
minimum
standards for
consumer
protection?
Who might even
propose it?
The US Federal
Reserve's
Daniel Tarullo
is coming in
atop the
Financial
Stability
Board, the
incoming head
of the Bank of
England.
Meanwhile
Canada's
Mark Carney,
who most
recently noted
by Inner City
Press at
the
White House
Correspondents
Dinner table
of Reuters,
servicer of
high
frequently
traders: a
veritable
nerd-prom of
conflict of
interest.
Lebor's
book
will be
helpful for
future work on
and in Basel.
His "Complicity
with
Evil: The UN
in the Age of
Modern
Genocide"
has provided
useful; it
could be
updated with
chapters on
for example Sri Lanka
and the UN
bringing
cholera to
Haiti then
dismissing all
legal
claims.
Lebor
is based in
Budapest, and
Hungary
appears more
than it
otherwise
might in his
book. He is,
this same
month,
releasing a
free e-book
short story,
and traveling
to New York to
give a June 4
talk
at the
Museum of
American
Finance.
We recommend
both.
, 
