It is certainly true that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of highly paid people in finance over the last generation. Recent studies reveal that most of the increase has resulted from an increase in the value of assets under management. (The percentage of assets that financiers take in fees has remained roughly constant.) Perhaps some policy could be found that would reduce these fees but the beneficiaries would be the owners of financial assets – a group that consists mainly of very wealthy people.
Another way to put this is that the massive and radical increase in financial regulation that has happened since 2000, accelerating after 2009 has imposed huge additional costs on financial professionals which have cancelled out the proven mult-decade track record of finance to deliver cheaper and cheaper services as scale grows.
If so, that would mean that the new Legal plutocrats will have been shown to be the sole beneficiaries of all of this 'reform'. Somewhere Msr. Bastiat must be smiling. Along with the lawyers, of course.
I hope you can fight through the FT gate here, the piece is interesting throughout.
- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.SLroPUVs.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment