Mispriced credit has been a major cause, if not the primary cause, of economic calamities in recent centuries. These calamities (depressions, runaway inflations, persistent high unemployment, etc.) in turn have caused wars, poverty, hunger, and other avoidable human misfortune. Mispriced credit is primarily caused by government interference in the financial marketplace. While financial markets periodically err, those markets correct for their errors much more quickly than the political marketplace corrects for erroneous policies it has inflicted on financial markets.

Government policies which cause mispriced credit include: interest rate controls, interest rate signalling by central banks, structural barriers and restrictions on private-sector financial institutions, government ownership and sponsorship of financial institutions, government support of failing financial institutions, subsidized credit for politically favored classes of borrowers, taxes that distort capital allocation, fixed foreign exchange rates, and gold standards and the like that attempt to fix the domestic value of a country's unit of account.

Ely & Company's mission is to work with clients and others in eliminating government policies which cause mispriced credit.

What's New

Letter to Farm Credit Watch Reader [Ely document 384]

Readers of Bert Ely's

September 11 2001 testimony to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs [Ely document 379]

Oral statement and written tes

Letter warning OTS about Superior Failure [Ely document 359]

Farm Credit Watch -- August 2001 [Ely document 351]

The Ag Census And FCA's National Charters Proposal