January 03, 2017

Our younger generations have much more valid reasons than savers and bankers to profoundly resent bank regulators

Sir, Patrick Jenkins reports that the world’s savers and bankers have every reason to resent the posse of policymakers, one of the most powerful quangos in the world, the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision — GHOS for short, and that will meet on January 8”, “Time for GHOS train to leave the shadows and reconnect” January 3.

At the meeting the group will discuss “the future direction of global financial regulation” the “system of risk-weighting the assets on banks’ books” and “the riskiness of banks’ mortgages and SME lending”

Well no. Those who most should resent GHOS (and the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision) are the young.

These irresponsible bank experts, without considering the purpose of banks, and without any empirical studies on what causes bank crises, decided that it was much better and safer for banks to finance “safe” houses than to finance “riskier” SMEs.

That translated into bank financing more the basements where unemployed young can live with their parents, than financing the job creation that can allow the young to be able to afford becoming parents too.

To top it up, they also decided that it was much safer to lend to the governments than to the private sector.

I have for more than a decade and in more than 2.500 letters tried to convince FT to help me to ask these “bizarrely secretive” regulators some very basic questions. Unfortunately until now I have had no such luck.

@PerKurowski