A Call for Judgment: Sensible Finance for a Dynamic Economy [Hardcover]

Our prosperity requires the enterprise of innumerable individuals and businesses who exercise their imagination and judgment and bear responsibility for outcomes. And widespread enterprise is fostered through dialogue and relationships, not merely prices in anonymous markets. Yet modern finance blatantly neglects these necessary elements for enterprise.

In the last several decades finance has become increasingly centralized, distanced, and mechanistic. Instead of many lending officers making judgments about borrowers they know, credit decisions are the output of the models of a few Wall Street wizards and credit agencies. This robotic centralized finance stifles the dynamism of the real economy and leads to recurring collapses.

A Call for Judgment clearly explains how bad theories and mis regulation have caused a dangerous divergence between the real economy and finance. In simple language Bhida takes apart the so called advances in modern finance, showing how backward looking, top down models were used to mass produce toxic products.

Thanks to excessively tight securities laws and loose banking laws, anonymous transactions have displaced relationship-based finance. And Bhidé offers, tough simple rules for restoring relationships and case by case judgment: limit banks and all deposit taking institutions to basic lending and nothing else.