From the Financial Times:
One of Germany’s most influential engineers has made an urgent plea to bring leading global industrialists, scientists and politicians together in an attempt to rapidly stabilise the financial system, highlighting the growing fear of tightening credit hitting supply chains. Franz Fehrenbach, chief executive of Bosch, the world’s largest car parts supplier, called for the creation of a global interdisciplinary think-tank to find ways to tackle the financial crisis. The head of Germany’s biggest privately owned engineering group warned that the risks of further bank crashes and a meltdown of credit supply to the broader economy remained unabated and urgent action was needed to prevent that.
“We have to bring the best people in the world together to find a sophisticated and interdisciplinary solution for the stabilisation of the world’s financial markets. The approach has to be enforceable on a global basis as too many plans have been torn apart by national governments,” Mr Fehrenbach told the Financial Times.
Wait a minute: did I just see the word enforceable applied to a think-tank’s out-put? This must be every wonk’s dream: an institution producing policy recommendations with the power of law. This concept needs to be extended: perhaps my wittering on the failure of peace operations should be backed up a crack brigade of Indian blue helmets? Or Alex’s musings on the food crisis reinforced by a guaranteed supply of free shrimp to anyone who puts them into practice?
