August 19, 2010

More than two years after and they haven´t got it yet!

Sir, this financial crisis was caused primarily because regulators by means of imposing different capital requirements for banks depending on the perceived risk of default created huge incentives for the banks to excessively pursue what was AAA rated.

In what Brooke Masters and Megan Murphy describe about the new Basel rules, “Suspense over”, August 19, evidences that the regulators, more than two years after the crisis got on its way, do still not understand the problems that their arbitrary regulatory discrimination causes.

In the proposed regulations there are some steps toward lowering the overall leverage possibilities of a bank, but there is not one word about eliminating the discrimination that, on the margin, where it counts, decides so much about where and at what cost bank credits go.