April 14, 2012
Banks consider the perceived risks of default of borrowers when setting the interest rates, the amounts of the loans and all other terms. Therefore, to also favor with bank regulations bank exposure to what is officially perceived as absolutely not risky, like triple-A rated and infallible sovereigns, and thereby castigating their exposure to what is officially deemed as risky, like small business and entrepreneurs, dooms the banks to dangerously obese exposures to the “not-risky”, and to the for the economy equally dangerous anorexic exposures to the “risky”. And that, no matter how you look at it, is plain stupid bank regulations.
Since FT has clearly, and I would say deliberately ignored the previous argument, about which I have sent FT over 600 letters the last 7 years, I find it absurd when in “Lost in translation”, April 14, FT expresses that it has “always favored intelligent banking regulations”
For example just earlier this week Martin Wolf wrote, for the umpteenth time, about balance of payment problems in Europe stating “In the years of euphoria before the financial crisis private capital flowed freely [to] Greece, Portugal and Spain”, and again completely ignoring the fact that these capital flows were actually much pushed by the dumb capital requirements for banks, “Why the Bundesbank is wrong”, April 11.
No wonder Margaret Atwood can express so much bile against powerful uncontrollable and unaccountable private sector Gods of high finance, “Our faith is fraying in the faceless god of money” April 14. No one has cared to inform her that without the stupid bank regulations there would have been no market for those bad mortgages she rightly abhors. No one has cared to inform her that those who really played Gods, and with immense hubris thought themselves risk managers of the world, were the bank regulators, and who now, instead of being held accountable, for instance for Basel II, are in charge of producing its sequel Basel III, which, by the looks of it, will just dig us all deeper in the hole.