“Risk Management”, yes, but for whom?
Any good financial investment advisor, depending on the age of his clients, would clearly give them different recommendations.
Sir, therefore, even when FT Special Report “Risk Management” specifies it is about “Financial Institutions”, full transparency would require it to clearly specify for whom.
The Basel Committee’s risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements too much favours what’s perceived (or decreed) as safe, e.g., public debt, residential mortgages and highly rated borrowers/securities, and too much fears what’s perceived riskier, e.g., loans to unrated small businesses and entrepreneurs. With that it is managing the risks of us older, like your journalists, than the risks of our children and grandchildren.
In reference to that holy intergenerational social contract he often spoke about, what would Edmund Burke opine about the Basel Committee?
Sir, Jesus Christ invited the Apostle to "put out into the deep" for a catch: "Duc in Altum" (Lk5:2) "When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish" (Lk5:6). The Basel Committee gave the banks of our Western world great incentives to fish from “safe” shores. And look where this has taken us.
PS. Not long ago I had a dialogue with ChatGPT on this issue.
PS. And, of course, as you well know, this is not the first time that I have opined on the Basel Committee regulations, an issue that according to Martin Wolf I am obsessed with.
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