The Devil's Advocate

75

Remove the safety net

It’s all very well having gung-ho gurus telling us we need to push ourselves out of envelopes and take bigger risks. But as the Western world limps from the shock of the credit crash, while we may wish to reward initiative, the last thing we want is more mavericks who risk wiping out not just themselves, but their companies and whole economies.

So now the pendulum has swung the other way. There is a growing list of checks and regulations in finance and business that try to coax the bolted horse back into the stable.

But if we genuinely want business to be safer, we need to remove the safety nets.

Many of the worst excesses of the credit crunch came about because banks thought they’d removed risk. ‘We’ve done away ...