news on the hedge-fund regulation front in the WSJ today. It’s the Germans
who have been keenest on trying to implement some kind of direct regulation
of hedge funds, but yesterday German finance minister Peer Steinbrück
said outright that "the regulatory approach is the wrong one". He
was backed up at the EU level, too:
The man who could draft EU rules to regulate hedge funds — EU Financial
Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy — said he sees no
need to do so because the industry contains its own checks and balances and
is so far working well.
There will always be a lot of anti-hedge-fund rhetoric in Europe. But judging
by this story, at least, we can expect that such rhetoric will remain just that,
and never turn into action.