Talk:Bank for International Settlements

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Contents

[edit] structure of the article

I just added a new subtitle ("goals and structure"), because until now we had a very long introduction, and a table of contents almost at the end of the article. --Michaël 11:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comments

This is not true. National-states are quite free (and do) set their own banking policies. (For example, China has reserve rate and banking regulations that are quite a bit looser than BIS suggestions.)

The reserve rates required of nation-states, land-owners, and corporations by national central banks are effectively determined by BIS policy. One of the most questionable assumptions of which are that all nation-states in the system, democratic or not, enjoy a "zero reserve" status under the BIS regime.
Another such BIS rule is that a drastically lower reserve rate is required of land-owners than of private corporations, and of these than the citizenry - a clearly "rigged" playing field favoring incumbent regimes and landlords which has led in recent years to suggestions that the BIS should be reformed to use credit rating agencies to determine the creditworthiness of these instead.

China recently joined the WTO and will likely be forced to tighten up. Also, as a still-nominally-Communist country, they have ideological problems with the current BIS reserve rate system. These are factors driving the "suggestions that the BIS should be reformed". Basically, the BIS system was set up to win the Cold War. It's probably the keystone of people's objections to the global banking regimes.

No they don't have ideological problems with it. There are a number of practical and logistical reasons that Chinese banks don't use BIS standards.
um, do you have any experience with Asian culture? if someone has an ideological problem with something, they invent " a number of practical and logistical reasons " to delay, i.e. ignore. IT's not like communism has gone away - the Chinese government knows exactly who wrote the original BIS guidelines and why. They're a holdover from the Cold War and everyone knows it.24
The practical problem with BIS standards is that the four Chinese state owned banks would likely collapse if they used BIS standards. However, unlike Japan, China is fixing its banking system.

But that misses my main point which is that BIS standards are guidelines which national central banks can and do ignore.

ok, fine, so they aren't as powerful as IMF or WTO rules.24
Which means that your statement that BIS effectively sets reserve rates is wrong.
depends on what you mean by "effectively" and "wrong". I don't know about you, but I cannot call up the managers of four Chinese state banks who are lifetime Communist Party members and tell them to shift over to consider capitalist military-industrial nations and private landowners to have drastically preferred credit, and make them do it, even though they "would likely collapse"... I'll stand by my statement, and instead say that they're about equally powerful as IMF or WTO which also say they don't "rule" their client nations.
Neither can the BIS. Chinese banks don't lend to foreign nations (they can't since the renminbi is not convertible) nor do they lend to landowners since no one in China owns land (they have land use certificates which provide most of benefits of tenure but generally can't be collateralized). The managers of Chinese state banks tend to be Harvard business school graduates rather than Communist Party members. BIS is nowhere near as powerful as WTO or IMF.
we still have this problem with the hack the way the last author left it:

I just happened across this article while studying credit policy for my masters program in economics, and I have to say it's one of the worst I've seen on wikipedia to date. For example, the topic of "Natural Capital" refers to landowners, something the BIS has no policy on or any interest in. Land owners are not required to hold capital under the policy. The only point of relevancy I can think of is that the Basel II makes it hard for banks to lend to landowners on high Loan to Valuation ratios. I don't know what you *think* the BIS does, but my understanding is that they process international payments, serve as a forum for monetary policy and are the platform for discussing and implementing Basel II. I know there's a tendancy amongst the left to lump this organisation in with other international organisations (WTO, World Bank and the IMF being the ones I see mentioned here), but they're not all the same. If you have a beef about property rights, the World Bank or IMF seems a more logical target.

At the very least, please describe what they actually DO, not what your personal beefs are with the global financial system. And even better, provide citations for your criticisms.

140.168.69.166 07:22, 12 August 2007 (UTC) (Jason)

Easier said than done. It's pretty time consuming to sort the wheat out from the chaff. Any efforts you might make will be most welcome. As a small token of my own good intentions, I have completely deleted the section on natural capital. It doesn't provide references, or explain the connection to the BIS. - Crosbiesmith 09:15, 12 August 2007 (UTC)


This article is of extremely low quality. Instead of explaining what the BIS does, who its members are, when it was established etc., it rushes into criticism already in the second half-sentence. Then the second paragraph starts with "this plan", without ever having mentioned any plan. It is utterly unintelligible.

well, it certainly is crap at this point, since all mention of the problem and the plan to reform reserves was removed. The most prominent critic of the standing BIS scheme is Joseph Stiglitz, ex of the world bank, who believes a very comprehensive global land reform scheme would be the way to fix the BIS and World Bank both. 24

24, would it be possible for you to write an article which cleanly separates description from criticism? AxelBoldt

not in the present political climate here, no. The BIS is such a heavily criticized institution with its own internal reform plans so self-critical that any mention of the Bank and its current policy must read like polemic to the uninformed. I think the description as I wrote it is fair, and reflects global opinion of the flaws in the BIS. It does not of course, and can never, reflect US perceptions that the BIS is fair play. Feel free to look up Stiglitz and Crockett (many of the criticisms of the BIS are Crockett's own). If we can settle down on how to debate economics topics and whether the classical bigots are going to be allowed to rule the roost, I'll know how to write it.24

That's a heavily biased and agenda-pushing article. In other words, not encyclopedia material. If Larry were here, he'd just remove most of it to the talk page, as he did to one of mine back-when (and for good reason, I see). Cheers, Koyaanis Qatsi, Monday, April 8, 2002

it's nice that you believe that. When did you last talk to Crockett? The article is indeed biased towards his published point of view, and describes his problems and agenda, as it should, since he is the source cited, and that is the current plan of the Bank's own management. What is the issue here?

If this is Crockett's opinion, not your own, say so. That is part of the issue. If it is your opinion, not Crockett's, it does not belong in an encyclopedia. That is the rest of the issue. Koyaanis Qatsi, Monday, April 8, 2002

the article as I left it described the problem of moving off a landownership and military fiat preference system (leading to the "risk free rate" for all dictatorships backed by "the West" no matter how truly uncreditworthy they are, and also leading to the global debt mess, but that's hardly only my view) and adopting credit ratings as the problem of "hardwiring the credit culture", Crockett's own exact words. 24
And, I doubt Larry understands this topic well enough to comprehend the variosu arguments around land reform, military fiat, global banking and etc. So if me moved it to talk it would be for a perception, not for an analysis of bias.24

I moved this from the main page, since it lacks a neutral description of the bank. Biased propaganda has no place in Wikipedia, especially if it is as incomprehensible as the following.

it was the uninformed edit that made it incomprehensible. The criticism of the bank comes from other world bank figures, and it's own management. The program of reform mentioned is the bank's own. Shows what happens when people who don't understand the material, and just don't like what they read, hack it up rather than understand it. Anyway, there are more important articles to waste my credibility on, and in general this crowd can't tell a m:Governing ontological distinction from a m:Governing operational distinction, so rather than be suicide-bombed for doing this right and offending some neoclassical fool's "truth", I'm going to leave it alone. Thanks for cleaning up the mess.24

The article as I left it is extremely poor, since it doesn't explain what the bank's mission is nor what it actually does. But the following paragraphs make matters only worse. AxelBoldt

- because of its interlocking role with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in supporting development under a strategy of capitalism, its role is debated politically, especially in money supply theory.
In addition to this plan to "hardwire the credit culture", and address specific concerns with Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs), Highly Leveraged Institutions (HLIs), Large and Complex Financial Institutions (LCFIs), and deposit insurance, the Bank under General Manager Andrew Crockett seeks to implement a standard "well-designed financial safety net, supported by strong prudential regulation and supervision, effective laws that are enforced, and sound accounting and disclosure regimes," for capitalism.
Doubts about this program, its effectiveness, and desirability, especially in light of serious failures of money-laundering law enforcement, major breaches of prudence and supervision in the United States, have to some minor critique of the BIS in the anti-globalization movement. However, as few in this movement recognize its absolutely central role, this has been muted in comparison with that focused on IMF, WTO and World Bank policies.

On http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:BankIntZahlungsausgleich.jpg, there is a GNU-FDL-licensed picture of the BIS headquarters in Basel, Switzerland you may use for the article. I made this photograph. Regards, David Croll/de:Benutzer:Keimzelle

David, Thanks! I actually found the picture before I found your note. It's a good clear picture and it really helps the page. Viele dank! Crosbiesmith 23:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


The author knows nothing about monetary policy, nothing about banking regulation, nothing about central banks, nothing about the history of the BIS, nothing about economics. This article should be taken off of Wikipedia. Bhcpunga 18:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Global value

I've reverted the whole edit made by User:142.177.92.181, as it introduces a raft of undefined terms, unattributed opinion, and irrelevant references. The 'Montreal Declaration of the World Municipal Leaders' doesn't have any direct connection to this article. If a participant made a specific criticism of the BIS that might be worth quoting. I don't belive the idea that the BIS should consider the 'human value of mothers' as as a store of 'objective global value' has been discussed anywhere else - Crosbiesmith 20:03, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] M3 indicator?

Can I ask someone to explain this term. I am researching macroeconomics for personal interest and have to rely on the internal links to define some terms. There is no article, link nor description for this term. 206.24.48.1 03:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Role in WWII

I recently watched the documentary cited on this page, and I think that a stronger statement should be made about the role of the BIS in moving Nazi funds and collaborating with the Nazis. There seems to be little doubt that this happened, and it would seem like bias to dismiss these claims as mere accusations, when there are solid records indicating that members and heads of the BIS and world banks like the Bank of England (as part of the BIS) aided or did not take action to prevent the transfer of gold from conquered nations to the reichsbank. Any thoughts? Markleci 01:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Article added. Interesting read! --LC 01:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Thats why i am here - the WWII controversy


This is the worst page I have ever seen. Political, lacking of basic information about the topic, haphazard, incorrect information. If I turned this in in high school, I wouldn't have got a good grade. I see no hope for this page, unless someone apolitical and knowledgeable starts completely over. This page is a disgrace to wikipedia. 2-1-2007


I'm in the process of collecting material for a new article on Allen Dulles which does justice to the historical record. Like this one, which reads like an advertisement for the bank, the Dulles article is a whitewash.

I amend my comment somewhat after having read the Criticism section of the article. While it calls me a "Conspiracy Theorist", which ought not be a pejorative in my opinion, it does mention the principal accusation of the place of BIS in plundering of the gold of conquered nations.ProudPrimate 01:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

"An early foe of Hitler...." it says, lifting whole paragraphs from a CIA website page. He was part of a massive collaboration and support with Fritz Thyssen, Brown Bros. Harriman, and Prescott Sheldon Bush. But I want to be sure the foundations are all in place first. I just bittorrented a version of the documentary mentioned above — with an American voice narrating, (who doesn't mention TimeWatch in the opening passage, perhaps to avoid crediting them). But the rest is identical, and I agree, the damning evidence against all of these too, too clever men is massive.

I'm particularly interested in Hjalmar Schacht, whose creation the BIS was, and his close connection with Dulles. Hitler is quoted in after-dinner repartee as saying "He is a man of quite astonishing ability and is unsurpassed in the art of getting the better of the other party. But it was just his consummate skill in swindling other people which made him indispensable at the time." (quoted in the video, and in a review of Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht).

ProudPrimate 01:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Irrelevant and unsourced sections

I've removed the following sections: Dollar hegemony, Debt load, and Export vs. domestic, as they are unsourced and are tenuously connected to the BIS. - Crosbiesmith 12:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GRB

GRB does not seem to a fraud in terms of cheating people out of money. As far as I can tell, GRB does not ask for money. I tried to register an account with GRB. The GRB site said it emailed a PIN. But I never got an email. The script to resend a PIN was broken. It gave a ColdFusion error.

GRB is a pie-in-the-sky proposal for an alternate banking system. Even if GRB were a fraud, this article would not be the place to warn people about it.

I removed the section on GRB.


TT    13:06, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nazi Gold controversy

I have not deleted this section. But I nominate it as a candidate. The section cites a reference. Which is good. But the section does not have much to do with the Bank for International Settlements. Which is bad.


TT    13:27, 17 May 2008 (UTC)