Thread: Universal Jurisdiction??

It is a tempting dream to imagine a hierarchy of lawmaking bodies that covers the whole world. But when you consider the example of the EU (finances have't been signed off for seven years * or so I heard recently) it could more easily be a nightmare.

I feel safer with individual countries with their individual laws. As long as a country minds its own business it should be left to control itself. International bodies should only interfere if one country does something hostile to another.

Originally Posted by gratewhitehuntr

(Europe calling for greater regulations in US finacial system?)

I worked for one of the biggest financial institutions in the world until 2 years ago. U.S. based fwiw. I kid you not, the majority of my time was eventually spent on the red tape, all the pointless bureaucratic nonsense that achieves absolutely nothing except satisfy the auditors. Mostly because of constantly increasing regulations. Which might have been OK if I was a trader or something, but I was in the I.T. department keeping servers running. Well not at the end, I was instructed that keeping live servers running was a lower priority than meeting SLAs on the admin stuff that was foisted on us. So servers stayed down. Eventually I resigned in disgust.

My point is that I genuinely believe that the recent collapse of financial institutions (my old company very much included) was CAUSED by overregulation. Can you imagine what would happen if even more international regulation and auditing were brought in?

Sorry for the rant.

EDIT> * Oops, my mistake. EU finances haven't been signed off for about 14 years now.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7092102.stm