Referees Explainer

The Referees represent various regulatory bodies and their role in managing the behaviour of corporations and businesses.

Regulation of business is a key Culture Wars battle ground, with Conservatives falling firmly on the side of low to no regulation, and Liberals mostly arguing for increased regulation and oversight of business practicies, particulalry in the financial sector.

The goal here is to illustrate how incredibly complex the financial sector has become, and to argue that the issue was not over-regulation or under-regulation., but rather the issue was a failure to regulate the right things. The regulators failed to even understand what was being done. They had no chance to prevent the GFC under the existing set of rules. Rules are always implemented to prevent what has happened in the past from happening again. But teh GFC was a disaster of an entirely different nature to those before it. There were rules in place, but tey were regulating a game that no longer existed.

And now politicians on both sides can argue forever about what might have been done to prevent the issue, in the knowledge that nothing they say can never be proved wrong.

Alan the Green = Alan Greenspan

Ben the Bailer = Ben Bernanke

Paul the Fairest = Paul Krugman