Financiarul

President Traian Basescu on Tuesday, November 24, told the debate on “Liberalism in the Romanian Right Wing” that Romania learnt that a minimum regulation was necessary in the banking system, an aspect that made it possible, one and a half years after the beginning of the crisis, for banks here not to show any signs that they may be in danger.

“We have learnt that a minimum regulation is necessary, a fact that made it possible for the time of crisis to find us with a healthy banking system, which, look, one and a half years after the beginning of the global crisis, does not show any signs that it may be in danger,” said the Head of State. In this respect he mentioned that, after 1990, Romania saw the collapse of Bancorex, of the Agricultural Bank, of Bankcoop.

“What happened in America too happened in Great Britain too, happened in Romania too, but it happened when we thought that everything was possible. In Romania too banks collapsed, we learnt the lesson of the collapse of banks …, but the Americans learnt it some fifteen years later than we did,” said Traian Basescu.
The President also said that, in the G20 and the European Council, they decided on the fact that the failure to regulate things entirely in such fields as banking was a mistake and efforts were made in order to come back to a certain regulation, but without going as far as the state taking control of the banking system.

“Deregulation is one of the major ideas the right wing had in the tradition of the past decades. They considered that the market was the one to regulate everything. And today, in the European Union, political leaders of all affiliations, from Socialists, to Liberals and supporters of the people’s parties, decide in the G20, but also in the European Council on the need to introduce some rules for the banking system, for example drawing the conclusion that the market cannot regulate everything and if it can regulate, it often cannot regulate it in due time,” he added.

According to Basescu, the need to reconsider the system regulating the activity carried out by banks was felt to a high degree. “It cannot be Liberal to carry out massive banking activity, often affected by corruption, to make enormous banking systems collapse and then go to the state and say: ‘State, now pay the bill’,” he said.
Romania’s President also said that in order to get out of the crisis and come to a prosperity level one must continue to reduce taxes, to simplify the bureaucratic system and to reestablish equity in the salary and pension systems.