The financial crisis of 2008-2009 : the financial supervision perspective

Abstract

The paper presents remarks regarding the recent financial crisis from the super-vision authorities’ perspective. It mentions remedies taken in the lieu of the crisis as well as underlines the need of preventive actions. The paper focuses on three main lessons that can be learnt from the recent crisis: First, regardless of its scope every crisis has local origins, hence local financial supervisors, who have the best knowledge and understanding of all sectors of their domestic market, should have sufficient tools and powers. Second, financial stability is a public good and it should be dealt with by relevant public institutions co-operating together. Third, there is a need to address the ‘too big to fail’ problem and to learn how risk increases with the increase in a financial institution’s size. In the final part, the paper focuses on various models of financial markets supervision and explains how supervisory system functions in Poland. The paper is based on the speech by Stanisław Kluza in the expert panel following the lecture by the Nobel Prize Laureate, Robert Mundell, during the 17th Global Finance Conference held in Poznan, Poland in June 2010.