Before aiming at any target, central banks must cure their shortsightedness

Sir, I refer to Martin Wolf’s “What central banks ought to target” FT, March 3.

With risk weighted bank capital requirements, the regulators are targeting what’s perceived as risky, thereby de facto fostering the creation of the excessive exposures to what’s perceived as safe, but that could end up being risky, which is precisely what all major bank crises are made off. In other words, they are putting future Minsky moments on steroids.

And if to the distortions in the allocation of credit to the economy that produces, you add the QEs, then you end up with such a mish-mash of monetary policy that no one, not even Mr. Wolf, should be able to make heads and tails out of it.

Wolf writes, “Central banking is art, not science… it must be coupled to deep awareness of uncertainty”. Sir, I ask, can you think of anything that evidences such lack of awareness of uncertainty than the risk weighted bank capital requirements?

So, before discussing what else to target, it is essential that central banks and regulators get their shortsightedness corrected.

Of course, “the central bank [should] set a rate that is consistent with a macroeconomic equilibrium” but, what would those rates be if banks needed to hold as much money when lending to the sovereign (the King) than when lending to citizens?

And when Wolf reports that “the New Zealand government has told its central bank to target house prices”, that makes me ask: Is anyone aware of the implications of having a central banks placed in the middle of that real, though not named, class war between those who have houses as investment assets and those who just want affordable homes?

Finally, as so many do, Wolf also signs up on that: “If people want less wealth inequality, they should argue for wealth and inheritance taxes”. But just as most do, he does so without explaining what assets, and to whom, the wealthy should sell, in order to reacquire that cash/purchase power needed to pay the tax that they handed over to the economy when they bought these. Not doing so, leaves one quite often a sort of populist aftertaste.

PS. Inflation? Just the same old confusion

@PerKurowski

Central banks seem not able to tell their magic porridge pot to stop

Sir, Robert Armstrong, Oliver Ralph, and Eric Platt make a reference to the fairy tale of the magic porridge pot writing “Every working day, $100m rolls into Berkshire — cash from its subsidiaries, dividends from its shares, interest from its treasuries. Something must be done with it all. The porridge is starting to overrun the house.” “‘I have more fun than any 88-year-old in the world’” Life&Arts, April 27.

And the magic porridge pot fairy tale ends this way on Wikipedia: “At last when only one single house remained, the child came home and just said, "Stop, little pot," and it stopped and gave up cooking, and whosoever wished to return to the town had to eat their way back”

Sir, the excessive stimuli injected by means of QEs, fiscal deficits, ultra low interest rates and incestuous debt credit relations, like the 0% risk weighting of the sovereign that provides credit subsidies to who provides banks with deposit guarantees, or loans to houses increasing the price of houses allowing still more loans to houses, against very little capital… all of that is the porridge of our time.

And it’s clear central bankers everywhere, have no idea of how to tell their pot to stop.

Will we be able to eat our way back? Not without sweating it out a lot at the gym. You see too much porridge, meaning too much carbs, and too little proteins, meaning too little risk taking, produces an obese not muscular economy. 

@PerKurowski

We might not end up homeless, but homes might be the only thing we end up with… and so how do we eat homes?

Sir, Rana Foroohar writes “Central banks can’t create growth by themselves. They can only funnel money around.” “What Trump gets right” April 15.

Indeed, but the way they funnel money around can also promote obese growth, and impede muscular and sustainable growth.

If you fill a financial irrigation system with huge amounts of liquidity, QEs, and ultra low interest rates, and some of its most important canals, like the financing of entrepreneurs are, because you consider these as risky, blocked with high risk weighted bank capital requirements, there’s no doubt bad things will happen. Among other, that those channels relatively wider because they’re perceived “safer”, like sovereign and the purchase of houses, will get dangerously much credit.

Sir, just consider the role of so much the credit for the purchase of houses has had in turning houses from being homes into being investment assets. I have not done the calculations but were we to deduct from the assets of the 99% less wealthy the worth of their houses, I am sure that we would be horrified about what little savings we would find. We might not end up homeless, but homes might be the only thing we end up with… and how do you eat a home?

@PerKurowski

Many “independent” central banks, like the Fed and ECB, are behaving as statism cronies

Sir, Michael G Mimicopoulos, when commenting on your editorial “The long bull market enters its twilight period” (October 13), writes“The debt of non-financial companies in the US, which has risen to 73.5 per cent of GDP, an all-time high… Companies have been borrowing money to buy back their own stock, to increase earnings per share rather than pay down debt.” “Fed should be viewed against its record” October 17.

Absolutely and that has been going on in front of Fed’s eyes; just like banks have been shedding assets which require them to have more capital, in order to show better capital to risk weighted asset ratios.

Fed independence? Central banks that approve of a 0% risk weighting of their sovereign with a 100% for citizens, keep interest rates ultralow, and launch quantitative easing programs purchasing loads of sovereign debt, can hardly be called independent, much more statism cronies.

@PerKurowski

Where would America be today had not bank regulators distorted credit and central bankers kicked the crisis can forward?

Martin Wolf, expressing concerns we all deeply share asks, “Who lost “our” America?” and he answers: “The American elite, especially the Republican elite… They sowed the wind; the world is reaping the whirlwind. “How we lost America to greed and envy” July 16.

I respectfully (nowadays not too much so) absolutely disagree. That because supposedly independent technocrats generated the two following events:

First, in 1988 regulators with their so sweet sounding risk weighted capital requirements, promised the world a safer bank system, but then proceeded to design these around the loony notion that what was perceived as risky was more dangerous than what was perceived as safe. That distorted the allocation of bank credits in favor of the "safer" present and against the "riskier" future. That must have stopped much of any ordinary social and economic mobility.

Then in 2007/08, instead of allowing the crisis to do its natural clean up, central bankers, starting with the Fed but soon to be eagerly followed by ECB and other central banks, just kicked the can forward, favoring sovereigns and existing assets. Just as an example, with their repurchase of the failed securities backed with mortgages to the subprime sector, they saved the asses of many investors and banks (many European) while very little of that sacrifice flowed back to those who, in the process, had been saddled with hard to serve mortgages.

Martin Wolf, and you too Sir, would benefit immensely in trying to imagine how the world would be looking now, without that unelected and inept technocratic interference! What had specifically Republicans, or Democrats, to do with that interference?

As I see it if that had not have happened Trump would not even have been thinking of running as a candidate.

PS. An aide memoire on some of the mistakes with the risk weighted capital requirements.

@PerKurowski

FT, that what is perceived risky is as dangerous to banks than what is perceived as safe, is not a “roughly right analysis”

Sir, you write: “The world may not return to what was normal before the global financial crisis… Still, consumers, investors and businesses should take some comfort that the central banks of the world’s biggest market economies have roughly the right analysis of where they are and how they might react in a downturn.” “Central banks correctly go their separate ways” June 16.

No way! With their continuous support of the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, central bankers evidence they have not understood “where they are know”. They are not “roughly right” but totally wrong. What can generate those excessive exposures that can endanger bank systems is not what is ex ante perceived as risky, but what is ex ante perceived as safe. 

Certainly central bankers the regulators did not commit this mistake on purpose, but the fact remains that they have produced much suffering; just think what their 0% risk weighting did to Greece. To hold then somewhat accountable, should we parade them down the D.C. Mall wearing dunce caps?

@PerKurowski

Instead of Andreas Georgiou, Greek courts should prosecute those who assigned Greece a 0% risk weight

Sir, Ulrich Baumgartner, Eduard Brau, Warren Coats and otherformer senior staff of the IMF launch a spirited defense of Mr Andreas Georgiou. They write that Georgiou, a respected authority in statistics, has been pursued relentlessly during seven years with lawsuit after lawsuit, for “bringing harm to Greece and dereliction of duty by refusing to falsify the figures.” “Greece should not hound man who refused to falsify the figures” June 7.

What “Georgiou and his Greek staff, helped by international experts” did was to produce corrections, “which showed a much bleaker picture than the earlier data, were vetted by Eurostat and accepted by the European Central Bank, the EU and the IMF as the basis for major financing.”

Amazing! If anything the courts should prosecute all those European central bankers and regulators who, for the purpose of their risk weighted capital requirements for banks, and knowing it did not merit it, assigned a 0% risk weight to Greece. Had it not been for that the governments of Greece would not have been able to build up that gargantuan level of public debt that was the primary cause of its crisis.

Since IMF, with its silence on it, has de facto endorsed that 0% risk weight, perhaps those here defending Mr Andreas Georgiou should start with a mea culpa. The world would very much appreciate that. It is way overdue.

To underestimate the strength of a nation causes its debt to cost more but, to overestimate it, causes excessive debts, which in my mind, as a citizen, is more dangerous.

Just imagine what would happen to a credit-rating agency if it was proven that it had knowingly assigned an undeserved an AAA rating?

What if a credit rating agency had knowingly assigned an undeserved AAA rating? European central bankers assigned an even worse 0% risk weight to Greece, which doomed Greece to excessive public debt… and they have yet not been held accountable for it in the slightest.

PS. And in the case of Greece EU violated a fundamental principle of a Union... solidarity.

PS. Even though none of these sovereigns can print euros on its own will, EU authorities assigned to all Eurozone sovereigns’ debts, a 0% risk weight.

@PerKurowski

Risk-weighted capital requirements for banks favoring the sovereign, artificially lowers the neutral/risk-free rate

Sir, Chris Giles writes: One “fundamental problem in central banking is that estimates of the neutral rate of interest — seen as the long-term rate of interest that balances people’s desire to save and invest with their desire to borrow and spend — appear to have fallen persistently across the world.” “FT Big Read. IMF Meetings: Setting policy in the dark” October 12.

That has an explanation:

Banks are allowed by the regulators to hold less capital against loans to the government (sovereign) than against loans to the private sector.

That means that banks are allowed to leverage more with loans to the government than with loans to the private sector.

That means that banks can earn higher risk-adjusted returns on equity with loans to the government than with loans to the private sector.

That means that banks, when compared to what they would have done in the absence of these distortive regulations, lend more to the government and less to the private sector; especially to the “riskier” part of it, like unrated SMEs or entrepreneurs.

That means there is a downward pressure on the interest rate on loans to the government, and, since these signify for the most a reference of the risk-free rate, that pulls all rates down from what should be their ordinary level.

And when that regulatory pulling down of rates is topped up with central banks with their QEs loads of government debt, the drop in the “risk-free” floor rate becomes truly important.

Sir, IMF and central bankers have been blind for a very long time to the distortions produced by the risk weighted capital requirements for banks.

Now and again they seem close to understanding it, like last November during IMF Research conference, but then they lose themselves again.

I guess, as Upton Sinclair Jr. said, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Now the real problem for me with central bankers goes way beyond this issue of the neutral interest rate.

My problem is that central bankers never resolved anything, they just kicked the 2007-08 crisis can forward, and basically left in place the distortions that produced it. So therefore a new crisis, could be an augmented one, just lurks around the corner. Great job guys!

And of course, with respect to central bankers pursuing an inflation marker, like in a greyhound race these pursue an artificial hare, I can’t but agree with Daniel Tarullo’s “Essentially you are setting policy on things you don’t know and can’t measure and then reasoning after the fact”.

@PerKurowski

What extraordinary things since the crisis have central banks achieved? Having kicked the can down the road?

Sir, Alan Beattie writes: “By being prepared to embrace the radical in the face of ill-informed criticism… — central banks have achieved extraordinary things since the global financial crisis. It would be most peculiar if now, when the pressure on them has abated, they mistakenly returned to a model of monetary policy rooted in the pre-crisis era.” “Central banks have a duty to come clean about inflation” September 23.

Sir, since the global financial crisis have really central banks achieved extraordinary things for most? I am not so sure. In many ways it seems they have only dangerously kicked the crisis can forward, while leaving in place the regulatory distortions that caused the crisis

But indeed let’s come clean about inflation. What would the inflation be if:

Most stimuli had not gone to increase the value of what is not on the Consumer Price Index

If there had not been so much credit overhang resulting from anticipating demand for such a long time.

If there had not been an ongoing reduction in the costs of retailing much of what is recorded on CPI.

If non-taxed robots and other automations had not put a squeeze on costs

Then the inflation could have been huge… so what are central bankers so fixated on the CPI?

PS. What would the inflation be, if the I-phone was in the CPI? J

@PerKurowski

If central banks offered “unimpeachably safe liquid assets” to all, how much negative interests would these pay?

Sir, George Hatjoullis writes: “Only the central bank can provide unimpeachably safe liquid assets…[so] allow individuals and corporate entities to hold deposit accounts with the central bank… The banking system would be free to pursue its risky credit provision role and individual entities would have their safe liquid haven”, “Allow deposit accounts within central banks” September 25.

That is based on two false premises. The first one is that central banks really are riskless. Though they can always print money, there’s no guarantee they won’t print too much money, and therefore repay with money worth less.

The other is that you could provide some with “unimpeachably safe liquid assets… a safe liquid haven” at no costs. The opportunity cost of that, is not sharing into the benefits of risk taking.

When it comes down to risk management I always start by asking: “What risk is it that you can least afford not to take?” That is because the worst certainty comes hand in hand with the avoidance of all risks.

Sir, to allow some to have access to unimpeachably safe liquid assets, while others take the risks, just guarantees putting inequality on steroids. The society should not do that! An adequate bank system allows everyone to share, at least ever so slightly; in the risk-taking the society needs to move forward.

@PerKurowski

Who should we most blame for distorting risk weighted bank capital requirements; central banks or politicians?

Sir, John Authers writes “Blaming central bankers, as many of the people behind the UK and US populist revolts tend to do, misses the point. The loose monetary policies of the past eight years helped deepen inequality by raising the wealth of those already with assets, without breathing sufficient life into those economies. But central bankers were for the most part following these policies to buy time for politicians to take the needed longer-term measures.”, “A bonfire of the certainties” November 10.

And Authers’ pities the “Central banks [that] have looked increasingly uncomfortable with their new role, while each fresh dose of monetary easing has had less impact than the one before.”

But what Authers’ does not do is to mention the bank regulations promoted and sheltered by central banks and which distorted the allocation of bank credit to the real economy. The statism, the silly risk aversion, the discrimination against the risky and the all that for no good safety reason, and that is imbedded in that piece of regulations, will go down in history as a shameful mistake, and disgrace all those who by commission or omission are responsible for it.

I ask, are central banks really auhorized to independently distort bank credit allocation

At the very end of the recent 2016 Annual Research Conference, none other than Olivier Blanchard, the former Chief Economist of the IMF, admitted that indeed more research was needed to better understand the underlying factors for the trend to lower public debt interests that can be observed the last 30 years; and that this trend might very well be explained to an important extent by current bank regulations.

When that research ends up showing we have for decades been navigating with a subsidized public borrowing rate as a proxy for the risk free rate, a financial compass distorted by the Basel Committee’s magnetic field, there will be many questions. Among these, why did FT silence more than 2.000 letters I wrote to it on this issue.

PS. The origin for this regulatory risk weighting can be found in Steven Solomon’s The Confidence Game” 1995. “On September 2, 1986, at the Bank of England governor’s official residence… when the Fed chairman Paul Volcker sat down with Governor Robin Leigh-Pemberton and three senior BoE officials, the topic he raised was bank capital”

@PerKurowski

Not only criminals and tax-evaders, but also ordinary people can be against restrictions on cash.

Sir, referring to how the existence of cash creates difficulties for central banks imposing negative interests. you mention “economist Kenneth Rogoff, one of the… restrictions on the use of cash noted proponents, is still receiving death threats for raising the idea. “The growing challenge to central banks’ credibility” September 24.

Frankly, that phrases it as only assassins and bad people would be for blocking the idea of restricting cash. I am sure that non-violent, non-criminal, not-tax evading ordinary people can also find the restriction of cash very problematic.

Just as an example, if governments mistreat cash, with inflation, they mistreat all holders of it equally, but if there was no cash and all monetary assets and their movements were identifiable, they could be very selective in who they want to mistreat or not.

Does this mean in any way or form that I condone the bad uses of cash? Of course not, that would be worse than silly.

PS. Central banks that only want banks to harvest what’s “safe” and not sow what’s “risky”, do not deserve any credibility. 

@PerKurowski ©

Central banks that only want banks to harvest what’s “safe” and not sow what’s “risky”, do not deserve any credibility

Sir, you write “central banks have resorted to ever more ingenious methods to convince a sceptical public that they still have the ability to create inflation”, “The growing challenge to central banks’ credibility” September 24.

Excepting those loving the current inflation in the values of assets, what sceptical public do you identify as wanting the core goal of central banks to be achieving higher inflation?

And as for their tools to obtain that “core goal” you mention the failures of QEs and low interest rates, and seemingly want them to dig deeper into negative interest rate territory.

No Sir! Any central banker that does not speak out against the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, that which have banks only refinancing the safer past and not financing the riskier future, do not deserve any credibility. Moreover they should be publicly shamed.

PS. Not only criminals and tax-evaders, but also ordinary people can beagainst restrictions on cash

@PerKurowski ©

Where have all safe assets gone? Short time passing. Gone to banks and central banks. When will regulators ever learn?

Sir, Elaine Moore, with respect to ECB’s QEs writes: “From the moment the European Central Bank first announced plans to revive the eurozone economy with a mass bond-buying programme, financial markets have expected trouble. First the focus was illiquidity and mispricing — now it is scarcity”, “Mechanics exposed as debt pool starts to run dry” September 9.

How could scarcity not be? Basel II’s low risk weighted capital requirements plus Basel III’s liquidity requirements, have substantially increased the demand of banks for low 0% risk weighted sovereign debt. That together with Central Banks purchases of “safe sovereign debt”, for their own QEs, just had to create scarcity.

Now we can hear widows, orphans and pension funds ask: Where have all safe assets gone? And the answer is to banks and Central banks everyone. Indeed when will they ever learn.

The saddest part though is that, as a result of all this odious regulatory distortion, the 100% risk weighted SMEs and entrepreneurs, those who most need and could do good with bank credit, they are left out hanging dry.

Sir, if we do not finance the riskier future and only keep to refinancing the “safer” past, we’re toast… even if there is no global warming.

@PerKurowski ©

While central bankers ponder moving their targets, we should ponder the need of moving them out.

Sir, I refer to your “Central bankers ponder moving the goalposts” August 26.

Stock and bond markets are important but the banks are most often the financiers of the first stages of growth. So while regulators, with their risk weighted capital requirements, insist in distorting the allocation of bank credit to the real economy; impeding sufficient flows to what has been deemed as risky, like SMEs and entrepreneurs, there is no chance in hell that QEs, negative interests or whatever else central bankers might concoct will work.

Some want to make up for the regulatory risk aversion by designing special financing facilities, for instance to SMEs. That’s would be the wrong way, that would just make everything more complicated and even less transparent.

Frankly, when I read about what options central bankers are pondering, it all sounds like a Lilliput and Blefuscus debate, 2% or 4%, break the egg on the larger or on the smaller end. Perhaps, if they cannot get their act together, and before they take us further up the huge mountain of debts they talk down as quasi-debts, we should seriously ponder the need to move them out. 

Inflation targets, nominal value of GDP and such, means little for most on Main Street. For instance, as a grandfather, I would welcome some central bankers that would target future employment rates, in decent jobs of course; and were willing to index their respective retirement plans to my grandchildren’s success, and to the value of the pension and retirement plans of those of their generation.

Sir, the independence of central bankers, cannot signify they are not to be held accountable for what they do.

@PerKurowski ©

Monetary and fiscal policies, even though they live at different addresses, are very much married

Sir, you write “there are a few welcome signs that fiscal rather than monetary policy may finally be taking some of the strain of stimulating a sluggish global economy” and, again, that “With bond yields apparently grinding ever lower in advanced economies, the cost of a debt-financed expansion continues to fall.” "A quiet shift in focus for economic policymakers", August 6.

And one gets the impression you believe monetary and fiscal policies are independent, and live separates lives. That’s really not so, they are much married even if they don’t live at the same address.

They were very much married back in 1988 when regulators (central banks) with Basel I assigned the sovereign a risk weight of 0% while giving us We-The-People one of 100%.

In November 2004, in a letter published by the FT I wrote: “Our bank supervisors in Basel [central banks] are unwittingly controlling the capital flows in the world. How many Basel propositions it will take before they start realizing the damage they are doing by favoring so much bank lending to the public sector [sovereigns]?”

And here follows a brief storyline I recently gave you in another of the letters you feel to have the right to ignore, only because they verse repeatedly on the same theme.

Government issues bonds, the public buys these, and central banks, wanting the economy to grow, then buy these from the public by means of QEs

Then the public does not know what to do with that purchasing power given to them by the central banks and, wanting to play it “safe”, looks to buy government bonds, and so the interest rates on public debts goes further down.

And so then you and many others recommend to take advantage of these low borrowing rates, in order for governments to invest in infrastructure. And if government follows their advice, it will issue more bonds, and the public will buy these.

But since the economic punch from infrastructure investments vanishes quite fast if there are no one willing to use and pay the right price for it, the central banks will then (cheered on by FT) launch new rounds of QEs, and buy more government bonds from the public… and on and on it goes… until!

Sir, at what point do negative rates become absolutely incompatible with a 0% risk weight of sovereign debt? How much capital will banks then need to hold against government bonds? How do we get off this not at all merry merry-go-round?

And to top it up, meanwhile, SMEs or entrepreneurs, those who could perhaps best help to get the real economy going, if these want the opportunity to a bank credit, banks are told that “since these clients are risky you need to hold more capital against their borrowings”. And so banks do not lend these clients the money, or, in order to compensate for the higher equity requirements, charge them much higher interest rates, making thereby the “risky” riskier.

How the hell did we land in this hole? I know!

PS. With respect to their future pensions, are central bankers and regulators isolated from their decisions? Should they be?

@PerKurowski ©

At what point do negative rates on government debt become absolutely incompatible with its zero % risk weight?

Sir, in reference to Dan McCrum’s “Fire up the printing presses for a useful jolt to the economy” August 5, this is what I have to say.

Government issues bonds, the public buy these, and central banks, wanting the economy to grow, then buy these from the public.

Then the public does not know what to do with that purchasing power given to them by the central banks and, wanting to play it “safe”, looks to buy government bonds, and so the interest rates on public debts goes further down.

And so then Martin Wolf and other recommend the government to take advantage of these low rates, in order to invest in infrastructure. And if government follows their advice, it will issue more bonds, and the public will buy these.

But since the economic punch from infrastructure investments vanishes quite fast if there are no one willing to use and pay the right price for it, the central banks will then buy more government bonds from the public… and on and on it goes.

And, to top it up, banks and insurance companies are told by their regulators: “If you do not buy 0% risk-weighted government bonds, then you have to cough up with more equity”. And so banks (and insurance companies and alike) buy more government bonds, and the rates on these keep falling and falling… where does it end?

At what point do negative rates become absolutely incompatible with a 0% risk weight? How much capital will banks then need to hold against government bonds? How do we get off this not at all merry merry-go-round?

And to top it up, meanwhile, if SMEs or entrepreneurs, those who could perhaps best help to get the real economy going, want the opportunity to a bank credit, banks are told that “since these clients are risky you need to hold more capital against their borrowings”. And so banks do not lend these clients the money, or, in order to compensate for the higher equity requirements, charge higher interest rates, making the “risky” riskier.

How the hell did we land in this hole? I know!

PS. With respect to their future pensions, are central bankers and regulators isolated from their decisions? Should they be?

@PerKurowski ©

Any central banker that distorts, just as he likes, the allocation of bank credit to the real economy, is not to be trusted

Sir, John Authers writes: “If I report that government bonds are selling for unprecedented low yields, because investors are looking for safe places for their money — both of which are undeniable and unexceptional propositions — abuse follows. Markets are fixed! Yields aren’t really that low!” “Central banks are not the enemy: Monetary policy has stayed too loose for too long: that is a failure of politicians” July 28.

In this context am I abusing when I hold that markets are to a very important extent fixed, only because banks are looking for places for their money that does not require them to hold much capital? I don’t think so!

And Authers writes: “Markets are not efficient, and are often wrong…But they are not part of a political process, and ignoring them is not an option. When they set the price at which we can borrow, or at which we can exchange currency, they create truths we have to live with”

Absolutely, but in this case bank regulators, most from central banks imposed their truths on the market.

Sir, though regulators would love you to do so, do not forget what assets caused the 2007-08 crisis.

Those were what was ex-ante perceived, decreed or concocted as very safe, and which, for that reason only, the regulators allowed banks to hold these assets against very, very little capital.

Assets perceived as risky do no set off major bank crises, that distinction belongs to what is perceived as safe, and that is what our dumb regulators ignored

And what has much stopped the economy from recovering in the face of enormous injections of liquidity? That the liquidity, because of bank regulations, central banks, are not allowed to flow freely by means of bank credit to the “risky”, the SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Of course I would love to trust central banks, but I just can’t. Anyone who comes up with an idiotic and statist idea like that of assigning a risk weight of 0% to the sovereign and 100% to us We The People, is not to be trusted.

@PerKurowski ©

​​Too many, FT included, approve of postponing all cleansing, even knowing that will make the après nous le deluge so much worse.

Sir, as an Executive Director of the World Bank, 2002-04, in a Risk Management Workshop for Regulators I argued: “A regulation that regulates less, but is more active and trigger-happy, and treats a bank failure as something normal, as it should be, could be a much more effective regulation. The avoidance of a crisis, by any means, might strangely lead us to the one and only bank, therefore setting us up for the mother of all moral hazards—just to proceed later to the mother of all bank crises”

And in 2006 in a letter published by FT in 2006 I argued for the “Long-term benefits of a hard landing”.

And so you should be able to understand how much I agree with Roger Blitz’s “Central bank medicine risks creating addicts”; subtitled “Regulators’ desire to treat all ills is storing up problems for the future” July 21

@PerKurowski ©

Regulators, your risk management, need to start by asking: What risks can we not afford the banks not to take?

Sir, I refer to Martin Wolf’s “Central banks as pawnbrokers of last resort”, in which he discusses Mervyn King’s suggestions as expressed in the book “The End of Alchemy”.

Again, falling sparrow included, Wolf’s and King’s primary, almost only objective, is to make banks safe, referring to the back room what many of us would consider a banks primary social purpose, that of allocating credit efficiently to the real economy.

They might defend a “leverage ratio”, but that is solely out of bank safety concerns, and not out of any sort of concerns that the current risk weighted capital requirements for banks hugely distorts the allocation of credit.

Wolf writes: The new improved safer banks would hold “Reserves at the central bank plus the agreed collateral value of any other assets [that] should match institution’s liquid liabilities, defined as loans of a year’s maturity or less”.

Where would the Western world be if its banks had always been required to hold after haircut collateral against all its liquid liabilities?

Also since regulators would certainly assign to the governments the lowest haircuts, they would not dare doing elsewise, it would mean that all “liquid liabilities” will basically fund the government.

Don’t we already have had enough of that statism that is reflected in the risk weight for sovereigns being zero percent, while the risk weight of the citizens that give the sovereigns it strength is 100 percent?

And speaking about the haircutters, don’t we have had enough with regulators who assign to those prime rated AAA to AA a 20% risk weight, while those who are rated speculative and worse below BB-, and are therefore totally innocuous, are given a risk weight of 150%?

Sir, I don't think central bankers could survive as pawnbrokers. Its a too competitive business… I can see them being gamed and getting stuck with a lot of “valuable” possessions worth nothing.

Martin Wolf writes that King’s “ideas deserve open-minded consideration”. Of course they do! But can we please, for once, begin by discussing the need for all borrowers to have equal fair access to bank credit? That which has nothing to do with the riskier being charged higher interests and getting smaller loans, but with the loans to the “riskier” generating higher capital requirements for the banks or, in this case, receiving higher haircuts as collaterals.

The risk we can least afford our banks to take, is that of these not financing the riskier future but only refinancing the safer past; is that of only supplying carb credits to the real economy and not the protein rich loans to SMEs and entrepreneurs.

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.” John A Shedd, 1850-1926

@PerKurowski ©