Why central banks should not regulate markets

The best reason for keeping central banks out of the regulation of markets is highlighted by the announcement a couple of days back by the Bank of England that it was suspending one of its employees and beginning an independent investigation into whether any of its staff were involved in or aware of any attempted manipulation of the foreign exchange market.

The simple fact of the matter is that the central bank is totally conflicted when it comes to market regulation. It is a big participant in financial markets – in fact its primary mandate is to legally manipulate these markets in the pursuit of the macroeconomic mandates entrusted to it. Monetary policy gives central banks a mandate to manipulate bond markets to fix interest rates at particular levels; in several countries, central banks are also mandated to manipulate foreign exchange markets; and occasionally (for example, Hong Kong and Japan at different points of time), they have even been mandated to manipulate the stock index market.

This completely legal manipulation mandate makes central banks unsuitable for enforcing conduct regulation of financial markets. There is too great a temptation for the central bank to condone or even encourage large banks to indulge in manipulation of markets in the same direction that the central bank desires. After all, this is just another very convenient “transmission mechanism” for the central bank.

In this light, the post crisis decision in the UK to move market regulation into a subsidiary of the central bank is a ghastly mistake.