Extraits de « The future of financial globalisation » (BIS paper n° 69, décembre 2012), de Stephen G Cecchetti, Amartya Sen, Jaime Caruana, Ravi Menon et José Darío Uribe
« […] Experience shows that a growing financial system is great for a while – until it isn’t. Look at how, by encouraging borrowing, the financial system encourages an excessive amount of residential construction in some locations. The results – empty three-car garages in the desert – do not suggest a more efficient use of capital!
Financial development can create fragility. When credit extension goes into reverse, or even just stops, it can induce economic instability and crises. Bankruptcies, credit crunches, bank failures and depressed spending are now the all too familiar landmarks of the bust that follows a credit-induced boom.
[…] In our 2011 paper for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Jackson Hole Symposium, Madhu Mohanty, Fabrizio Zampolli and I found that the effect of debt – public, household or corporate – turns from good to bad when it reaches something like 90% of GDP, regardless of the type of debt. To prevent adverse developments – both natural and man-made – policy should normally strive to keep debt levels well below this line.
If we measure the scale of the financial industry by employment or output, as Enisse Kharroubi and I do in a paper completed earlier this year, we come to the same conclusion. […] Again, the conclusion emerges that there is a point where both financial development and the financial system’s size turn from good to bad. That point lies at 3.2% for the fraction of employment and at 6.5% for the fraction of value added in finance. Based on 2008 data, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland were all beyond the threshold for employment (4.1%, 5.7%, 3.5% and 4.5%, respectively). And the United States and Ireland were also beyond the threshold for value added (7.7% and 10.4%, respectively). »
