December 01, 2012

Not only Mark Carney needs to get out of the City in order to explore and learn.

Sir, Adam Posen holds that “Mr Carney has to absorb substantive structural knowledge of the British economy, from the nature of its regional divergences, to the strengths of its labour market practices, to the deficiencies of its domestic business lending”, “Get out of the City, Mr. Carney, and explore Britain” December 1 

Absolutely, but just the fact that Mark Carney is not from Britain does not imply he needs that any more than any of his predecessors, or any of his colleagues, in Britain and in other countries. 

I do not know about central bankers but, with respect to bank regulators, if there is any special characteristic that seems predominant it is that they have never walked the main streets of their respective nation. For instance they have no idea of how difficult it can be for small businesses and entrepreneurs to access bank credit having to negotiate with Mark Twain’s risk adverse bankers. 

Had they known that, they would never ever have come up with something as foolish as the current Basel regulatory paradigm of capital requirements for banks based on perceived risk; which allow “The Infallible” to access bank credit in more generous terms than ordinary, even dangerously generous, and makes it so much harder and expensive for “The Risky” to do the same. 

And because our bank regulators were so clueless now our banks have extremely risky and dangerous over-exposures to what is ex-ante, in lieu of better alternatives, considered “absolutely not-risky”… and we, especially our youth, are stuck without jobs, as banks lock out small businesses and entrepreneurs.