Ηρθαν οι γιορτές και η υποκρισία για άλλη μια φορά χτυπάει κόκκινο. αρχίσαν όλοι να μας βομβαρδίζουν με διαφημιστικά για τους άπορους, για τα παιδάκια που πινάνε στην Αφρική, για τα ξεχασμένα παιδιά στα Ιδρύματα. Όλα αυτά αποτέλεσαν αφορμή να συλλογιστώ τη τρελή υποκρισία που υπάρχει σε αυτόν τον πλανήτη και την κακή νοοτροπία όπως και τα στερεότυπα που μας περνάνε.
Πως έχουν καταφέρει να φθάνουν οι γιορτές και ξαφνικά όλοι να σκέφτονται τα καημένα τα παιδάκια που υποφέρουν από την πείνα και τις αρρώστιες. θα με τρελάνουν αυτοί Είναι σχεδόν αστείο και τραγικό αυτό που μας συμβαίνει. Πως έχουμε μεγαλώσει έτσι; Απρόσωποι στρατιώτες κάποιων που εχτίσαν ένα κόσμο προσαρμοσμένο σε αυτούς. Μιλαω για τη τάξη των ανθρώπων που λόγω θέσης και εξουσίας μπορούν να αποφασίζουν για τις ζωές των άλλων. Ας μη γελιόμαστε πλέον. Η Αφρικάνικη ήπειρος δε σκοτώνει τον κόσμο της λόγω συνθηκών. Η διαβίωση εκεί είναι δύσκολη επειδη κάποιοι το αποφάσισαν. Αποφάσισαν να θεωρήσουν τους ανθρώπους αναλώσιμους και να εκμεταλλευτούν μια απο τις πλουσιότερες ηπείρους στο κόσμο, να μη πω την πλουσιότερη. Η πείνα, ο θάνατος και η δυστυχίά έρχεται απο τις πολυεθνικές που αρέσκονται στο να εκμεταλλεύονται τους πόρους της πλούσιας αυτής ηπείρου. Αλλά δεν θα μπορούσαν να μην ανταμείψουν τους ανθρώπους αυτούς με τις πλουσιοπάροχες δωρεές τους και τις εκδηλώσεις που γίνονται κυρίως στις γιορτές στο όνομα της φιλανθρωπίας. ο κόσμος τρώει το παραμυθάκι, και όλοι μαζί νιώθουμε καλύτερα οταν έχουμε έναν επιτυχημένο μαραθώνιο. όλοι μαζι συζητάμε πως το ποσό που μαζεύτηκε είναι μεγάλο και τα παιδάκια θα έχουν γάλα και εμβόλια για τουλάχιστον 1-2 μήνες. είναι πραγματικά πολύ έξυπνο το σύστημα που έχει στηθεί για την αισχροκέρδεια. Οι γιορτές λοιπόν είναι μια επίκληση στο ανθρώπινο συναίσθημα να βοηθήσουν αυτούς που δε ξέρουν αν θα ζήσουν άλλη μια μέρα για να δουν το φως του ήλιου. Και δώσ' του οι γιορτές και δώσ' του οι μαραθώνιοι και δώς του οι διαφημίσεις και δώσ του κόντρα γκαλά για να βραβέυσουν τους επιφανείς ανθρώπους με τις μεγαλύτερες δωρεές και δώς του τα άρθρα και οι συγχαρητήριες επιστολές και δώς του τα μεσημεριανά με τις αναφορές στη προσφορά του ενός και του άλλου. Και όλοι εμείς να παρακολουθούμε και να λέμε πως όλα είναι λίγο καλύτερα. έτσι μας έμαθε αυτός ο κόσμος. Οι γονείς μας, οι δάσκαλοί μας, τα ΜΜΕ. Οι γιορτές ικανοποίησσαν τη δική μας δίψα για φιλανθρωπία όπως και τη δίψα των πλούσιων και δυνατών ανθρώπων να το παίξουν και πάλι για λίγο θεοί. Ένας ολόκληρος κόσμος κομμένος και ραμμένος για να ικανοποιούνται τα βίτσια των ανθρώπων. Ίσως όλα αυτά μπορεί να είναι της φαντασίας μου. Ίσως να είμαι υπερβολικός όταν ισχυρίζομαι πως η Αφρικάνικη ήπειρος μπορεί να ζήσει χωρίς τους μικρούς Θεούς της φιλανθρωπίας. Αρκεί να δώσουμε μια μικρή ώθηση και να αφήσουμε την "μαύρη ήπειρο" να αναπτυξει τις δυνατότητες της. αυτό που χρειάζεται είναι να καταγγείλουμε αυτούς που στο βωμό του χρήματος, είναι ικανοί να βάψουν με αίμα τα χέρια τους, να αφήσουν τον τρίτο κοσμο(άκου τι λέω- τρίτος κόσμος.. ) σε μια σκόπιμη στασιμότητα... Ασ ξυπνήσουμε επιτέλους και ας βοηθήσουμε πιο ουσιαστικά. Οι γιορτές δε φθάνουν.. οι μικροί "θεοί" πρέπει να εκλείψουν..
Giannis Giataganas
IT Consultant
Monday 7 December 2009
curriculum vitae- Giannis Giataganas
| Short CV Giannis Giataganas |
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| Personal information | |
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| First name and Surname | Ioannis Giataganas |
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| Postal Address | |
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| Telephone(s) | +302107790021 | | +306972323908 |
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| E-mail | giannis.giat@gmail.com |
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| Nationality | Greek |
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| Date of birth | July 05, 1983 |
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| Gender | Male |
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| Marital Status | Single | ||||||||||||
| Military obligations | Completed |
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| Work experience | |
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| Dates | 20 October 2006 – 20 May 2007 |
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| Occupation or position held | Pr assistant |
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| Main activities and responsibilities | PR strategic planning- the organising of conferences- the design and building of 2 websites regarding PR office and conference center |
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| Name and address of employer | NCSR ‘’DEMOKRITOS ’’ Patriarxou Grigoriou & Neapoleos. Postal code : 153 10, Ag. Paraskeyh Attikis. 60228, Supervisor professor: ctsamis@imel.demokritos.gr |
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| Type of business or sector | Public Relation and IT |
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| Dates | 15 July 2006- 10 September 2006 15 June 2007- 30 September 2007 |
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| Occupation or position held | Information Technology Assistant |
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| Main activities and responsibilities | Providing technical support in hardware & software |
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| Name and address of employer | Data logic Α.Ε.Β.Ε Tsiknia 42, Postal code: 30 100, Agrinio Email: datalogic@dtl.gr |
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| Type of business or sector | IT related company |
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| Education and training | |
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| Dates | October 2009-September 2009 |
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| Title of qualification awarded | MSc in Information Systems |
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| Principal subjects/occupational skills covered | Enterprise Resource planning Systems, Innovation and entrepreneurship Data warehouses and large- scale databases, Project Management, Basic Principles of Management, |
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| Name and type of organisation providing education and training | Dept. of Informatics |
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| Level in national or international classification | Grade Point Average: 7.50/10 (“Very Good”) Subjects/courses covered : 5/11 |
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| Dates | September 2003 – September 2007 |
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| Title of qualification awarded | B.Sc. in information Systems & Management |
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| Principal subjects/occupational skills covered | Relevant to Information Systems: Information Systems Analysis & Design, Analysis & Design of Enterprise Systems, Information Systems Security, Decision Support Systems, Management Information Systems, Accounting Information Systems, Operations Research, etc. Relevant to Computer Science: Introduction to Computer Science, Introduction to Computer Programming, Digital System Design, Data Structures, Computer Programming in C++, Algorithms, Databases, Database System Design, Communication Networks, Compilers, Operating Systems, Software Engineering, etc. Relevant to Marketing And Communication: Internal Communication Strategy, Public Relations, Advertising, etc. Relevant to Management: Organizational Behavior & Leadership, Human Resources Management, Information Systems Project Management, Change management & Quality Management, etc. Other courses: investment Analysis & Applications, Accounting, Computational Mathematics, Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra & Applications, Probability, Calculus, Statistics etc. |
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| Name and type of organisation providing education and training | Dept. of Informatics |
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| Level in national or international classification | University Degree. Grade Point Average: 6.79/10 (“Very Good”) Subjects/ Courses covered: 40/40 |
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| Dates | May 2009 |
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| Title of qualification awarded | Seminar attendance |
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| Principal subjects/occupational skills covered | Management and Technologic Issues in Synchronous Economic Enviroment |
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| Name and type of organisation providing education and training | Dept of Management Science & Technology (DMST) |
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| Dates | November 2005 |
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| Title of qualification awarded | ArcGIS seminar Attendance |
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| Principal subjects/occupational skills covered | ArcGIS ArcInfo - ArcView - ArcGIS Server- standard software package |
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| Name and type of organisation providing education and training | MDS Λ. Κifisias 38 - 151 25 paradeisos Maroussi-Athens tel: 210-6198866 ,Fax: 210- 6198825 - e-mail: marathon@otenet.gr |
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| Personal skills and competences | |
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| Mother tongue | Greek |
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| Other language | English Certificate of Proficiency in English ( Certificate of Proficiency in English ( German Zeugnis Zentrale Mittelstuffenprϋfung (Goethe Institut) (August 1999). | ||||||||||||
| Work experience during undergraduate studies |
9. Project management: “The prince2 method“. (Course: Project Management for Information Systems) |
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| | 10. Innovation and Entrepreneurship project: “Study of successful Strategies for the development of innovative products and processes”. (Course: Innovation and Entrepreneurship) |
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| | 11. “The Wingert Co. case study- Reengineering the processes of the organization-Report Weaknesses- provide Solutions”. (Course: Management Information System and Supply Chain Management) |
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| Social skills and competences | a). Very good in team work and cooperation- through working in project team in NCSR “Demokritos” and before that, in university working extensively in teams b). Considerable communication and organisation skills |
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| Organisational skills and competences | a) Committed to achieve personal goals b) Ability to work under pressure c) Skills in Coordinating group of work |
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| Computer skills and competences | a) Microsoft Windows and Office- Linux(Ubuntu versions) | ||||||||||||
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| | c) MySql database server |
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| | d) Microsoft Navision, Ms Project, Ms Visio |
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| | e) Netbeans, Aris 6.0 | ||||||||||||
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Giannis Giataganas
IT consultant
Competitive Intelligence (CI)
05/11/2009
Business Intelligence Doesn’t Mean Spying on the Competition
Competitive Intelligence (CI) only employs public information sources to build the foundations of business strategy
by Antonello Garzoni, Director of the Master in Entrepreneurship and Business Strategy, Università Bocconi
published at the Bocconi online newsmagazine
Following the example of North America and other Western economies, large and medium-sized firms in Italy are starting to establish offices of Competitive Intelligence (CI). According to a recent study, almost 30% of companies employing over 1,000 employees have teams devoted to analyzing the competition.
What do these people do? Are they business spooks or specialized professionals? Although many of its techniques of analysis were refined in the context of the Cold War, business intelligence exclusively relies on public sources. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, the biggest association in the field, has long given itself a strong ethical code to prevent industrial espionage and/or illicit ways of procuring information. To the contrary, CI is about making the most of all possible information sources (data banks, Internet, personal contacts, information from clients etc.) to construct working hypotheses on competitors and their potential competitive moves. CI is about a systematic process of information gathering, analysis and dissemination on competitors and the competitive environment.
CI not only monitors current business performance (market share, balance-sheets, launch of new products) but interprets the strategic trajectory of the competition. When the competitor’s product is already on the market, it means you got there too late, so you need to guess prospective moves. In order to identify the fucure actions of competitors, you need to look at investment processes, such as the building of a new plant, the hiring of specialized personnel, the registration of a new brand or a new patent. Or it could be an acquisition of a company operating in another industry, signaling diversification and entry into a new sector. Alternatively, CI looks at business alliances and joint-ventures, in order to uncover the desire of building networks and bridgeheads for future expansion. A systematic and well-conducted analysis of the competition enables companies to remain up-to-date on industry trends and stay on profitable growth paths.
CI forces CEOs to base their decisions on more objective evaluations. For instance, if we find out that a competitor, a textile multinational, has closed a plant and laid off many employees in Germany, this could lead us to infer an imminent crisis is looming. But if the competitor has made an agreement with an Asian giant, this could just be a prelude to corporate reorganization. As Jim Williams, a well-known CI consultant, says: “Good intelligence with bad strategy produces mediocre results. Bad intelligence with good strategy can be catastrophic.” These explains why major corporations are internalizing business intelligence, in order to integrate it with strategic planning.
Translated by Alex Foti
Giannis Giataganas
IT related
Business Intelligence Doesn’t Mean Spying on the Competition
Competitive Intelligence (CI) only employs public information sources to build the foundations of business strategy
by Antonello Garzoni, Director of the Master in Entrepreneurship and Business Strategy, Università Bocconi
published at the Bocconi online newsmagazine
Following the example of North America and other Western economies, large and medium-sized firms in Italy are starting to establish offices of Competitive Intelligence (CI). According to a recent study, almost 30% of companies employing over 1,000 employees have teams devoted to analyzing the competition.
What do these people do? Are they business spooks or specialized professionals? Although many of its techniques of analysis were refined in the context of the Cold War, business intelligence exclusively relies on public sources. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, the biggest association in the field, has long given itself a strong ethical code to prevent industrial espionage and/or illicit ways of procuring information. To the contrary, CI is about making the most of all possible information sources (data banks, Internet, personal contacts, information from clients etc.) to construct working hypotheses on competitors and their potential competitive moves. CI is about a systematic process of information gathering, analysis and dissemination on competitors and the competitive environment.
CI not only monitors current business performance (market share, balance-sheets, launch of new products) but interprets the strategic trajectory of the competition. When the competitor’s product is already on the market, it means you got there too late, so you need to guess prospective moves. In order to identify the fucure actions of competitors, you need to look at investment processes, such as the building of a new plant, the hiring of specialized personnel, the registration of a new brand or a new patent. Or it could be an acquisition of a company operating in another industry, signaling diversification and entry into a new sector. Alternatively, CI looks at business alliances and joint-ventures, in order to uncover the desire of building networks and bridgeheads for future expansion. A systematic and well-conducted analysis of the competition enables companies to remain up-to-date on industry trends and stay on profitable growth paths.
CI forces CEOs to base their decisions on more objective evaluations. For instance, if we find out that a competitor, a textile multinational, has closed a plant and laid off many employees in Germany, this could lead us to infer an imminent crisis is looming. But if the competitor has made an agreement with an Asian giant, this could just be a prelude to corporate reorganization. As Jim Williams, a well-known CI consultant, says: “Good intelligence with bad strategy produces mediocre results. Bad intelligence with good strategy can be catastrophic.” These explains why major corporations are internalizing business intelligence, in order to integrate it with strategic planning.
Translated by Alex Foti
Giannis Giataganas
IT related
Outsourcing: CIOs' tips on getting it right
By Nick Heath
Published: 24 November 2009 13:00 GMT at silicom
http://services.silicon.com/itoutsourcing/0,3800004871,39661655,00.htm?s_cid=298
Outsourcing deals typically promise to deliver cost savings and increased efficiency - but all too often the promises fail to match the reality.
At the National Outsourcing Association's Sourcing Summit last week, two heads of IT shared their experiences of how to get the best out of outsourcing agreements and make sure they're delivering long-term value.
Highways Agency
Four years ago the Highways Agency - which is responsible for maintaining the UK's motorways and some A-roads - relied on more than 100 contracts with external companies to deliver a wide range of its IT services.
On joining the organisation in 2005, Highways Agency director of information Denise Plumpton inherited the whole portfolio of outsourcing deals - different contracts for helpdesk, different contracts for application support and different contracts for telecoms - along with a number of in-house staff.
"It was like looking at a bowl of spaghetti - it did not seem to have any coherence and it was not clear who was doing what," she told the conference.
Plumpton decided the best approach was to end its existing outsourcing deals, bring infrastructure management and business analysis roles back in house and to sign a deal with a single outsourcer Atos Origin to handle the rest.
The contract, struck in 2007, sees Atos Origin managing the Highways Agency's IT infrastructure, datacentres, telecoms, desktop and providing application support.
The deal costs the Highways Agency about £20m per year but has cut its annual IT spend by about 10 per cent, delivered a fast return on investment and "continues to deliver further savings year-on-year", according to Plumpton.
"I wanted to get simplicity, clear accountability for delivery and get efficiencies out of cost as well.
"It produced significant savings without reducing the quality of service," Plumpton said.
A large part of the savings is derived from the economies of scale that Atos Origin's operations can provide.
"For example, for the service desk, if we have a lot of calls then Atos Origin are able to roll out a bigger team to handle them without us having to pay for that larger team each time we need it," she said.
As a result of this flexibility, satisfaction levels with service desk support among the agency's 2,500 desktop and laptop users have also been rising, she said.
Tube Lines
By the end of this year Tube Lines - the company responsible for maintaining a large part of London Underground's rail network - is on course to have fewer than 24,000 calls to its service desk and a 95 per cent reduction in the number of severity one and two system faults.
It's a far cry from 2005, when Tube Lines racked up 75,000 calls to the IT helpdesk, with much of the blame being laid - unfairly - on outsourcers that were providing services to the company, and IT opex was 40 per cent higher.
According to head of IT at Tube Lines Adrian Davey, the problem lay with the way Tube Lines handled the outsourcing contract. "We were not committed to making it work," he said.
The turnaround began with Davey holding meetings with Tube Lines' internal IT team every morning to discuss 'severity one' computer faults to discover what was going wrong with the organisation's systems.
He then set about improving Tube Lines' relations with its outsourcers and reviewed the outsourcing contract line by line, replacing technical goals with business service targets.
"It was about ensuring the quantity and quality of the information reaching the end user and not the server uptime," he said.
Davey found that as the efficiency improved he needed less and less people to manage Tube Lines' wholly outsourced IT infrastructure and was able to reduce the internal IT team, from 50 people in 2005 to just six today.
Giannis Giataganas
IT related
Published: 24 November 2009 13:00 GMT at silicom
http://services.silicon.com/itoutsourcing/0,3800004871,39661655,00.htm?s_cid=298
Outsourcing deals typically promise to deliver cost savings and increased efficiency - but all too often the promises fail to match the reality.
At the National Outsourcing Association's Sourcing Summit last week, two heads of IT shared their experiences of how to get the best out of outsourcing agreements and make sure they're delivering long-term value.
Highways Agency
Four years ago the Highways Agency - which is responsible for maintaining the UK's motorways and some A-roads - relied on more than 100 contracts with external companies to deliver a wide range of its IT services.
On joining the organisation in 2005, Highways Agency director of information Denise Plumpton inherited the whole portfolio of outsourcing deals - different contracts for helpdesk, different contracts for application support and different contracts for telecoms - along with a number of in-house staff.
"It was like looking at a bowl of spaghetti - it did not seem to have any coherence and it was not clear who was doing what," she told the conference.
Plumpton decided the best approach was to end its existing outsourcing deals, bring infrastructure management and business analysis roles back in house and to sign a deal with a single outsourcer Atos Origin to handle the rest.
The contract, struck in 2007, sees Atos Origin managing the Highways Agency's IT infrastructure, datacentres, telecoms, desktop and providing application support.
The deal costs the Highways Agency about £20m per year but has cut its annual IT spend by about 10 per cent, delivered a fast return on investment and "continues to deliver further savings year-on-year", according to Plumpton.
"I wanted to get simplicity, clear accountability for delivery and get efficiencies out of cost as well.
"It produced significant savings without reducing the quality of service," Plumpton said.
A large part of the savings is derived from the economies of scale that Atos Origin's operations can provide.
"For example, for the service desk, if we have a lot of calls then Atos Origin are able to roll out a bigger team to handle them without us having to pay for that larger team each time we need it," she said.
As a result of this flexibility, satisfaction levels with service desk support among the agency's 2,500 desktop and laptop users have also been rising, she said.
Tube Lines
By the end of this year Tube Lines - the company responsible for maintaining a large part of London Underground's rail network - is on course to have fewer than 24,000 calls to its service desk and a 95 per cent reduction in the number of severity one and two system faults.
It's a far cry from 2005, when Tube Lines racked up 75,000 calls to the IT helpdesk, with much of the blame being laid - unfairly - on outsourcers that were providing services to the company, and IT opex was 40 per cent higher.
According to head of IT at Tube Lines Adrian Davey, the problem lay with the way Tube Lines handled the outsourcing contract. "We were not committed to making it work," he said.
The turnaround began with Davey holding meetings with Tube Lines' internal IT team every morning to discuss 'severity one' computer faults to discover what was going wrong with the organisation's systems.
He then set about improving Tube Lines' relations with its outsourcers and reviewed the outsourcing contract line by line, replacing technical goals with business service targets.
"It was about ensuring the quantity and quality of the information reaching the end user and not the server uptime," he said.
Davey found that as the efficiency improved he needed less and less people to manage Tube Lines' wholly outsourced IT infrastructure and was able to reduce the internal IT team, from 50 people in 2005 to just six today.
Giannis Giataganas
IT related
Thursday 8 October 2009
The Crisis, a Case of Shortsightedness
Economic policy: those who look farther down the road know when it’s time to slow down
by Franco Bruni, Professor of Monetary Theory and Policy, Università Bocconi
The international economic crisis is largely due to myopic behavior and lack of foresight. We have been shortsighted about looking into our past: we forgot about past crises and we extrapolated only from the boom years of the recent past. And we have been shortsighted looking into the future, riding booms and bubbles as if they could have gone on for ever. We have valuated risk taking into account exceedingly short time horizons.
Among the most important measures to help avoid a repetition of the crisis are recipes which steer us toward a long-run approach rather than short-termism. There is a growing sense that the main task of macroeconomic policy is no longer to help navigate the economy from recession to recovery in the shortest possible time, but to stabilize long-run performance, by moderating the upswings and mitigating the downswings of the business cycle.
The central idea is to properly coordinate fiscal and monetary policies. Monetary policy is well known in its tools and effects, but its anticyclical stance must be made more timely and rigorous. The crisis was born out of the excessive monetary expansion on interest rates and credit, through which, not only in the US, boom years and the accompanying speculative bubbles were financed. When the time came to pull the brake on monetary policy, the accelerator was pushed instead.
The other form of policy is new and its instruments and objectives are yet to be precisely defined. It’s called macro-prudential policy and is about measuring and containing the level of risk across the whole financial systems. In addition to transparent and integrated statistical monitoring, with international policy collaboration and standardization of oversight all over the world, macro-prudential policy calls for anticyclical policy moves regarding certain regulated parameters. Some already exist, like the minimum capital requirements of banks, others need to either be invented or globally diffused, like a ceiling on the degree of leveraging in financial institutions.
These are parameters that need to become restrictive when the credit cycle is on the up and vice versa. The existing regulation of financial risks tends to do the opposite; it’s too permissive when thigs go well and belatedly too prudent when things to bad and the risk of insolvency mounts. Macro-prudential policy is about preventing wild cycles in credit.
Both the EU and US are moving in this direction. But there is unfortunately hesitation. Some fear giving too much power to central banks. But it should be evident than only central banks are able to intervene timely and in a coordinated fashion with policies of cyclical stabilization. In order for central banks to do well their job, their independence from political and market pressures is crucial. It’s not easy to spoil the party when the economy booms, and impose prudence and foresightedness to effervescent markets!
The approach oriented to stability across the cycle of money, credit and financial risk has been long preached by the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, a prestigious but not much-heeded international agency. Its annual report, published this summer, reminds us how shortsightedness has always historically been at the root of international financial crises.
Giannis Giataganas
IT related
by Franco Bruni, Professor of Monetary Theory and Policy, Università Bocconi
The international economic crisis is largely due to myopic behavior and lack of foresight. We have been shortsighted about looking into our past: we forgot about past crises and we extrapolated only from the boom years of the recent past. And we have been shortsighted looking into the future, riding booms and bubbles as if they could have gone on for ever. We have valuated risk taking into account exceedingly short time horizons.
Among the most important measures to help avoid a repetition of the crisis are recipes which steer us toward a long-run approach rather than short-termism. There is a growing sense that the main task of macroeconomic policy is no longer to help navigate the economy from recession to recovery in the shortest possible time, but to stabilize long-run performance, by moderating the upswings and mitigating the downswings of the business cycle.
The central idea is to properly coordinate fiscal and monetary policies. Monetary policy is well known in its tools and effects, but its anticyclical stance must be made more timely and rigorous. The crisis was born out of the excessive monetary expansion on interest rates and credit, through which, not only in the US, boom years and the accompanying speculative bubbles were financed. When the time came to pull the brake on monetary policy, the accelerator was pushed instead.
The other form of policy is new and its instruments and objectives are yet to be precisely defined. It’s called macro-prudential policy and is about measuring and containing the level of risk across the whole financial systems. In addition to transparent and integrated statistical monitoring, with international policy collaboration and standardization of oversight all over the world, macro-prudential policy calls for anticyclical policy moves regarding certain regulated parameters. Some already exist, like the minimum capital requirements of banks, others need to either be invented or globally diffused, like a ceiling on the degree of leveraging in financial institutions.
These are parameters that need to become restrictive when the credit cycle is on the up and vice versa. The existing regulation of financial risks tends to do the opposite; it’s too permissive when thigs go well and belatedly too prudent when things to bad and the risk of insolvency mounts. Macro-prudential policy is about preventing wild cycles in credit.
Both the EU and US are moving in this direction. But there is unfortunately hesitation. Some fear giving too much power to central banks. But it should be evident than only central banks are able to intervene timely and in a coordinated fashion with policies of cyclical stabilization. In order for central banks to do well their job, their independence from political and market pressures is crucial. It’s not easy to spoil the party when the economy booms, and impose prudence and foresightedness to effervescent markets!
The approach oriented to stability across the cycle of money, credit and financial risk has been long preached by the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, a prestigious but not much-heeded international agency. Its annual report, published this summer, reminds us how shortsightedness has always historically been at the root of international financial crises.
Giannis Giataganas
IT related
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