Disinfecting Power of More Sunshine

Back in 1913, Louis Brandeis, who would later go on to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice, wrote, "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases."

Brandeis was discussing the disinfecting power of sunlight and the impact of public disclosure on the growing power of financial markets.

Congress has a chance to help shine the light on our financial institutions. A bill called the Financial Transparency Act, introduced in the House, would require financial institutions to run public notices in newspapers detailing their financial condition.

Among the bills sponsors are two North Carolina representatives from opposite sides of the aisle - Republican Walter Jones and Democrat Brad Miller. It could lead to key financial data, such as assets, liabilities, reserve funds and capital stock, being reported in newspapers, making that information readily available to anyone who wants to read it.

That gives us some fodder to try to determine if a financial institution is making money and investing wisely.

Over the past year, we've learned some hard lessons when it comes to our nation's banking system. We've learned that there are some banks that the government and financial leaders believe are too big to fail. We've learned that the prescribed remedy for keeping our financial system afloat is costly, in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

And we've learned that when money that banks loan to businesses and individuals dries up, it makes economic times hard on all of us.

Economists, politicians and wonks have debated the causes of the financial crisis and the current economic hard times.

Some say the problem was a lack of regulation of financial markets. Others argue the opposite, saying that government meddling in the marketplace caused banks and other institutions to believe they could make risky endeavors and that the government would come to the rescue if things went bad.

We'll save that debate for another day.

What we do know is that most of us were clueless about banking practices and surprised at how quickly things turned for the worse.

Financial reporting requirements used to be the law of the land. But they were repealed back in the mid 1990s. The public's primary means of measuring a bank's health was gone.

Public notices won't, in and of themselves, solve future institutional problems. But they will provide a more readily available source of information for experts to discern an institution's health, and therefore provide more opportunities to turn things around before severe problems set in.

A pat on the back goes to our two North Carolina congressmen - Miller and Jones - who are helping to spearhead this bipartisan reform.

Sunshine on financial institutions is indeed a disinfecting power, as Brandeis once said.

REPRINTED FROM THE NEW BERN SUN JOURNAL.

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