Would Hollywood allow those responsible for a 2007/08-crisis box-office-flop to walk down a Davos red carpet?

Sir, Chris Giles writes: “Almost all countries are failing to improve growth rates” … Responsive leadership — [is] the theme of this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos” “Economies need to heed wrath of the ‘left behind’” January 17.

And Giles also quotes 1994’s Paul Krugman with…“Productivity growth isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything”

Sir, how can you not leave too many behind, and make it harder for productivity to grow, when regulators give banks incentives to refinance the safer past and present economies, but not to take risks on the “riskier” future.

Their 20% risk weighting for AAA rated and sovereigns like Greece, while handing SMEs a 100% weight handicap, caused the crisis, and has hindered a better recovery.

Neither Hollywood nor Bollywood, would ever have allowed the script writers, producers, actors or directors, responsible for such an box office-flop as the 2007-08 crisis, to walk down the red carpet. Why can those in Davos do so? The answer is that those besserwisser experts are self-appointed, and therefore not subject to be vetted by a box-office… and so now populists looking for votes are vetting them.

PS. I hear there is some confusion going on in the Basel Committee. Some members are nervously starting to ask each other: “Could it really be that what’s perceived safe is riskier for banks than what’s perceived risky?”

@PerKurowski

Nial Fergusson, do not blame Keynes, Keynesian economists do not give Keynesian policies a fair chance to work.

Sir, Niall Ferguson holds that Keynesians have lots of egg on their face after the elections in the UK where the conservatives won, by a lot “Labour should blame Keynes for their election defeat” May 11.

Indeed they should have, but the reason for it has little to do with what Ferguson thinks or wants to imply.

No Keynesian policy on earth, could deliver real positive and sustainable results, when bank regulations impede the liquidity their spending policies generate, to reach those who could make the most of it.

In 1988 with the Basel Accord, sort of when everyone was busy attacking the Washington Consensus for its private sector bias, the regulators (for ideological reasons), for purposes of defining the equity banks had to hold against assets, decided that the risk weight of the infallible sovereign was to be zero percent, while the risk weight for lending to the fallible citizen was to be 100%.

With that the regulators privileged government bureaucrats’ access to bank credit over the others in the markets.

Later, in 2006, with Basel II, they “half mended” it, by stating that some AAArisktocrats were good enough to have a risk weight of only 20%.

And so then everyone met happily in Davos, where of course no lowly “risky” SMEs are invited.

And here we are with for instance Paul Krugman preaching us about inequality, but keeping mum on the fact that the risk-weighted equity requirements for banks, by killing the opportunities of the risky to access bank credit in fair terms, is a great inequality driver.

The real problem might be that many of current Keynesians want much more statist governments than Keynes ever considered, and so the zero percent risk weighting of sovereigns, attracts them too much… and so they do not want to even give Keynesianism a fair chance to work.

Of course, the free-market defendants who failed to see how distorted the allocation of bank credit has become; or who do not want to cross banker friends who just adore the concept of being able to leverage immensely what is ex ante perceived as safe, and therefore keep silence on all this, will also end up having egg on their faces. (You too Niall Ferguson?) 

PS. How can you give a zero credit risk weight to a debtor who, right in your face, is pursuing financial repression, inflation (just another kind of haircut)?

@PerKurowski

How long would roulette remain a valid game under a Basel Committee for Gaming Supervision?

Sir, roulette is a game where absolutely all bets produce exactly the same expected financial payout; in this case a small loss since the house wins when the zero comes up. What would happen if regulations forced casino to increase the payout for “safer” bets, like betting on a color, than for “riskier” bets, like betting on a number? Easy, the game of roulette (and the casinos) would not be sustainable.

But, to forcefully alter the payouts and introduce a disequilibrium, is exactly what bank regulators have done by allowing banks to leverage much more their equity, and the support they receive from taxpayers, with assets perceived as safe than with assets perceived as risky.

The result will be too much betting on what’s perceived as safe, and too little betting on what perceived as risky; something that of course makes the financial sector and the economy unsustainable.

Unfortunately, the IMF, the Basel Committee, the Financial Stability Board; and experts like Lawrence Summers, Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman, and Martin Wolf, none of them wants to acknowledge the risk-adverse distortions in the allocation of bank credit to the real economy, that the current bank regulations produce.

And, without considering that, then the whole discussion to which Martin Wolf refers to in “An economic future that may never brighten” April 15, becomes incomplete and unproductive… or in franker terms… nonsensical.

@PerKurowski

It is of no use pouring water on a drowning plant

Sir, Samuel Brittan writes “You don´t need to be a lefty to support Krugman” June 8. Of course not! But, supporting aggressive government spending to remedy a recession produced by a crisis before eliminating the cause for it, is just throwing fairly good money after really bad. 

This crisis resulted from the imposition of capital requirements for banks which discriminated based on perceived risk, and created obese bank exposures to whatever was officially deemed as not risky and anorexic exposures to what is officially deemed as risky… and that discrimination is still in full effect.. especially when bank capital is more scarce than ever.