Today’s post is a short commentary on the latest development in a story which we have already covered here in Financial Regulation Matters . In early October we looked at the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and their decision to remove AIG, the insurance Giant that played a central role in the Financial Crisis, from its designation as a ‘Systemically Important Financial Institution’ (SIFI). In the post we discussed how some of the world’s most influential financial figures, like Carl Icahn, had been devoting considerable time and effort to seeing this designation removed and how, ultimately, the decision could be seen as Donald Trump and his Administration making good on a number of promises to scale regulation back in the coming years. On Friday this deregulation picked up pace, but this time on a global level, and for this post these developments signal a clear marking of a systemic shifting through the economic cycles – however, this has connotations. The detai...

Today’s post reacts to the news that the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) has removed AIG’s designation as a ‘Systemically Important Financial Institution’ (SIFI), which has the effect of lessening the regulation of the massive insurer that was at the heart of the Financial Crisis. In this post, the focus will be on that decision and how it plays into a growing deregulatory movement which is gaining strength all the time although, as we shall see, this ‘amnesia’ that is taking hold is based upon particularly short-sighted and overly-politicised ‘point-scoring’ which puts the very fragile financial system in great peril. It was announced on Friday that, technically, the giant insurer American International Group, more commonly known as AIG, is no longer ‘too big to fail’. The insurer, who at the height of the crisis was afforded an $85 billion bailout , was on Friday taken off the ‘systemically important financial institution’ list which conveys a number of increased ...