FT, you are so utterly blind to the systemic risks intrusive bank regulations create.

Sir, with respect to the “US Treasury’s report on financial regulation reform” of June 14 you write: “The report does not propose doing away with any part of the regulatory regime wholesale. Capital and liquidity standards, stress testing, living wills, prudential regulation and the Volcker rule are all accepted in principle. In practice, though, the report urges that they be applied with less vigour, more discrimination and greater consultation with the industry”

Well that is bad! The report should take away most of it because “Capital and liquidity standards, stress testing, living wills, prudential regulation [and credit ratings]” is nothing but dangerous sources of systemic risks, introduced by regulators wanting to play bankers instead of acting like regulators.

For instance what do you think is gained by having all banks focusing on the same risk a la mode in a stress test, while ignoring if the real economy is getting the access to credit it needs in order to remain vibrant?

What would I propose instead of all that? Perhaps 3% capital requirements on all assets to cover for bankers’ ineptitude, and 7% capital requirements on all assets to cover for unexpected events, which comes up to the 10% proposed by the Financial Choice Act for smaller banks, but that I would love to see applied to all banks.

@PerKurowski

You journalist who write about banking regulations, should you not find it somewhat curious at least?

Friend

If you as reporters on finance and bank regulations observe that someone has asked the global bank regulators in the Basel Committee some reasonable questions, for about a decade, and they have not yet been answered, would that not strike you at least as something curious?

The Questions:

Can you think of any major bank crisis that was caused by excessive lending or investments to what was perceived as risky? Is it not so that these crises have resulted from either unlawful behavior of bankers or excessive lending or investment to what was wrongfully perceived as not risky?

No and yes? If so can you explain why bank regulators have set the capital requirements for banks based on perceived risk? Ludicrous as it sounds, would then not totally opposite capital requirements than the current make more sense, like higher capital requirements for what is perceived as not risky, than for what is perceived as risky?

Since we know that the banks already consider the credit ratings when deciding whether to lend or not to a client, what amounts and at what interest rate, is it logical that the regulators t also use exactly the same credit ratings when deciding the capital requirements for banks? Is that not sort of double counting? If you consider good information excessively, does this not distort the value of that information?

We know that one of the prime objectives for our banks is to attend the credit needs of those small businesses and entrepreneurs that are so vital important for the creation of jobs, but who have no access to capital markets and who cannot even afford to get their creditworthiness rated by the agencies. If so does it make any sense to discriminate against the small businesses and entrepreneurs by means of forcing the banks to carry relatively much higher capital when lending to these than when lending to something with for instance a triple-A rating?

And now I ask you, if the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board are not able to satisfactory respond these simple questions, do you think they should have the right to dig us further down into a black-hole of regulatory complexity with their Basel III?

Per Kurowski

A former Executive Director at the World Bank (2002-2004)

http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/

Why is not the existence of counterfactual bank regulations of interest to the Financial Times?

There is a very curious issue with current bank regulations and about which I have written hundreds of letters to the Financial Times but strangely enough, at least to me, they do not seem at all interested.

I am referring to the fact that since all financial bank crisis in history have resulted from excessive investment or lending to what is perceived as not risky, and no crisis has, naturally, ever occurred from excessive investment or lending to what is perceived as risky, the current only tool in the toolbox of the Basel Committee, higher capital requirements when risks are perceived as low and vice-versa is totally counterfactual.

In fact those capital requirements increased so dramatically the returns on equity for the banks when investing or lending to triple-A rated securities or clients that they stampeded after the triple-As, and went over a subprime cliff.

In fact those capital requirements discriminate so odiously against those perceived as of higher risk that they are making the access to bank finance much more difficult for the small businesses and entrepreneurs, precisely those clients whom banks most should help as they have little alternative access to capital, precisely those clients of banks on whom society so much depends for growth and job creation.

In fact the only truly invisible hand at work was that of the scheming banking regulators messing around with capital-requirement-risk-weights… under the table.

I ask don’t you agree with that what I describe is worthy of more commentaries? Why then is not a word of it reflected by the “Without fear and without favour” Financial Times?

Of course other media should also take it up but as you can see from this blog I have invested many efforts in having the Financial Times echoing my small and tiny though sometimes a bit noisy voice.

Most of the letters to FT I refer to you find in this blog under the label of "subprime banking regulations".

FT, for the umpteenth time, it was not deregulation it was bad regulation.

Sir, in “A fresh approach” October 4 you write: “The recent global crisis, also rooted in an excessive faith in deregulation, removed any vestigial credibility from the view that markets always work best when left to themselves”.

I am amazed. Do you not yet know that this crisis was provoked directly by regulations which allowed banks to leverage their equity 62.5 times to 1, or more, when investing or lending to anything related with a triple-A rating? Is this what you call deregulation? I just see it as extremely bad regulations. Do you truly believe the markets would have allowed banks to leverage the way they did if left on their own design? Of course not! Just look at how they keep the unsupervised hedge funds in a much tighter leash.

To reform financial regulations we need to reform the Basel Committee.

In May 2003, as an Executive Director of the World Bank, I told those many present at a risk management workshop for regulators the following with respect to the role of the Credit Rating Agencies. “I simply cannot understand how a world that preaches the value of the invisible hand of millions of market agents can then go out and delegate so much regulatory power to a limited number of human and very fallible credit-rating agencies. This sure must be setting us up for the mother of all systemic errors.” And this I repeated over and over again, in FT, even in a formal statement at the Board.

Now as reported by Alan Beattie and James Politi in “IMF points to danger of ‘over-reliance’ on credit ratings for sovereign debtors” September 30, the IMF is finally admitting “Policy makers should work towards the elimination of rules and regulation that hardwire buy or sell decisions to ratings”

That is good, better late than never. But the real question that needs an answer is why on earth it had to take a financial crisis of monstrous proportions to reach a conclusion that should have been apparent to any regulator from the very beginning.

I saw it happen in front of my eyes and I know why it happened. As I wrote in a letter published in the Financial Times in November 2004, it was the result of the whole debate about bank regulations being sequestered by the members of a small mutual admiration club.

Therefore if there is now something even more important than rectifying the faulty financial regulations, that is to break up the Basel Committee and make absolutely sure it represents a much more diversified group of thinkers. That would have at least guaranteed that the basic question of what the purpose of the banks should be would have been put in the forefront before regulating them. Current regulations do not contain one word about that.

Besides me there were not plenty of experts who raised the question of whether the credit rating agencies should have such a prominent role and made many other valid criticisms. These persons should participate in designing and putting in place the needed reforms. It is simply unacceptable that the reforms that carry with them such huge global implications are implemented exclusively by Monday morning quarterbacks.

FT, you are looking in the wrong direction and with the wrong glasses.

Sir, in “A sector still in need of reform” September 27 you write “if the regulator disliked the approach a bank was taking, it could increase the capital charge to offset the higher risk”. May I humbly suggest that phrase proves that, as so many others, you do not really understand the real problem.

If a regulator suddenly disliked something an approach a bank was taking, chances are that the banks would already discovered it themselves and taken measures. Why do you suppose regulators know more than bankers? If you think so why do you not make regulators the bankers? No the real risk, and what caused this crisis and all others, lie always in all the approaches both bankers and regulators like the most, and that precisely because of that can grow into a dangerous systemic risk.

When regulating banks more than concerning yourselves with what you do not like or perceived as risky, you need to worry much more about what you and the bankers like and perceive as not risky.

If only the UK was rated BB+ to B-…

Then a UK small business would be able to compete with the government on equal grounds for bank credit, because only then would the bank have to post the same capital for both.

The nannies in the Basel Committee decided to hand out, through very low capital requirements for banks, generous incentives for these to go and play in “safe” places, even though, as regulators, they should have known that financial and bank crisis only occur where the perceived safety attracts the excessive volumes that pose a risk for the system… swamp land with alligators might now and again eat up a citizen, but never pose a threat to a nation.

But on top of it all, the Basel nannies also turned out to be communists in disguise, as they ordained that if a bank gave loans to a sovereign rated AAA by their risk kommissars then the bank needed no capital at all… and what small business can compete with that?

More than two years after the crisis started we read in a report by Brooke Masters and Patrick Jenkins that Lord Turner is now announcing tougher bank capital regime. But since he, like Basel III, does not mention a review of the arbitrary and regressive risk-weights that were the real causes of the disaster, we can only conclude he is not really fit to be a regulator, at least not in war time.

More than making them safer, we need the banks to be more useful.

Sir Stephen Cecchetti affirms that the current proposals from the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) that will impose higher capital and liquidity requirements on the banks is “A price worth paying to make banks safer”. It is just the same old story! When will we hear about making the banks more useful, or at least less useless?

Cecchetti correctly mentions that “lower capital means higher returns on equity but a smaller buffer against loan defaults and investment losses”. He ignores though the fundamental problem that the lower capital requirements are applied discriminating in favor of what is perceived ex-ante as having lower risks… and therefore increasing the returns of what is perceived ex-ante as having lower risks… and therefore pushing the banks to excessively invest in what is perceived ex-ante as having lower risks… precisely the stuff that financial and bank crisis are made of.

Eliminate the discrimination in the capital requirements and banks will start lending more to the small business and entrepreneurs who though most likely to be perceived ex-ante as more risky are also most likely to hold in their hands more of our future generation of jobs…which will thereby make our banks more useful.

The AAA pattern is extremely dangerous.

Sir, John Authers in “The Long View”, July 11, quotes Benoit Mandelbrot (who at least I never heard about before) calling the bubbles and crashes “the inevitable consequence of the human need to find patterns in the patternless”. One is left with the question of whether our financial regulators are not supposed to know that sort of stuff when they regulate. At least I always complained how the regulators were developing their own dangerous patterns... the just follow the AAAs.

The capital requirements for banks as determined by the Basel Committee in Basel II requires a bank to hold 1.6 percent in capital when lending to a corporation rated AAA to AA, and 12 percent when lending to a client rated below BB- .

Sir, how many bank crisis have you seen happening because banks have lend too much to AAA or AA rated clients who later turned out not to merit those ratings? All! And how many crisis have you seen happening because the banks lend too much to those rated BB-? None! If so, can you please explain what the regulators were thinking? If anything, would it not seem that the inverse of these capital requirements would be more valid?

Why should a poor BB-rated company, who surely must find it very difficult and expensive to raise finance, on top of it all, have to pay the banks an additional compensation in order to make up for the competitive advantages awarded by the regulators to the much more dangerous AAAs?

When the going gets tough give the tough a chance!

Sir John Plender wrote “Fragile State of banks means recovery is still precarious” June 30 and few would debate him on that. Where he is wrong though is saying “that there is precious little left in the policymakers’ locker”.

At this moment what is most required, as a public regulatory policy, is to immediately reduce the capital requirements for banks on all those operations that just because they were deemed as more risky by the credit rating agencies, had to be backed up with higher capital requirements.

If we do not do that, we run the risks that while the banks are rebuilding the capital lost in AAA-land, they will crowd out completely those tough we so much need to get going now when the going is tough… and that would really be the end.

Financial Times would you mind?

Sir would you mind much if I explained to FT’s sophisticated readers why it is not so much whether the capital requirements for banks are high or low that matters, but more so the way they discriminate among assets based on default risk-weights?

Let us suppose that banks, with no special regulations, would be willing to lend at .5% over their own cost of funds to those who are rated triple-A, and with a 4% spread to more risky small businesses.

If the banks were obliged to hold 8 percent against any asset, which means they can have a leverage of 12.5 to 1 (100/8) then their net results on capital, before credit losses, when lending to the AAAs would be 6.25% (.5x12.5); and 50% (4x12.5) when lending to the small businesses. With such a difference the banks would do their utmost trying to lend well to the small businesses… as there are clearly no major bonuses to be derived from lending to the AAAs.

But when the regulators allow, as they do, the bank to hold only 1.6 percent in capital when lending to AAA rated clients, which implies a leverage of 62.5 to one (100/1.6), then the expected net result on capital for the banks when lending to AAAs, before credit losses, becomes a whopping 31.25% (.5x62.5).

And of course, a bank, and bankers, being able to make 31.25% before credit losses when lending to no risk-AAAs, would be crazy going after the much more difficult 50% margin before credit losses available when lending to the riskier small businesses and entrepreneurs.

And this is how the risk-adverse regulators pushed our banks into the so dangerous “risk-free-AAA-land” while blithely ignoring that no bank or financial failure has ever occurred because of something perceived as risky, they were all the result from something perceived as not risky; and while ignoring that what we most want out of our banks is precisely that they be good in nurturing with credit those small businesses that might grow up to be the AAAs of tomorrow.

And this is really why we find ourselves in a crisis of monumental proportions, never ever before had our regulators dared to be so publicly wimpy so as to ask the banks to so excessively embrace what was, ex-ante, perceived as having no risk.

By the way, who gave the regulators the right to discriminate solely based on perceived default risks? The small businesses, in order to have a chance to access credit, are as a direct consequence of these capital requirements forced by the regulators to pay much more for their loans... as simple as that! Do not forget that whatever little capital the banks currently have, it is mostly because of those perceived as being risky.

Are capital and liquidity rules for the banks out of the domain of the US Congress?

Sir in “Tsunami of regulation batters banks”, May 21, Brooke Masters reports “The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is aiming to adopt new capital and liquidity rules by the end of the year.”

Given that the current capital rules, which unjustifiably favors the good credit risk ratings already favored by the markets, created the stampede after triple-A rated securities that detonated the current financial crisis, this must surely be one of the most important part of the financial regulatory reform.

Can then anyone explain to me why the Basel Committee is not mentioned even once in the 1336 pages long reform bill presented to the US Senate or in the 1776 pages long H.R. 4173 financial regulatory Act approved by the House of Representatives?

It’s good but please do not call it a financial regulatory reform!

Sir you are correct in what you hold in “Reform is in sight” March 17, namely that “When money is loose and prudential rules are lax, banks will find dubious assets to stuff leveraged-financed balance sheets”. The current crisis is a result of the regulators authorizing banks to leverage up to 62.5 to1, if their appointed risk surveyors, the credit rating agencies, deemed these assets all but dubious.

But precisely because of that you should perhaps better refrain from referring to proposals such a Senator Chris Dodd´s bill as a reform, since it contains nothing that truly addresses the above. To do so might cause the impression that the work has been completed when in fact it has almost not started.

Sheer regulatory lunacy!

Sir Anousha Sakoui in “S&P in rating threat to covered bonds” December 16, writes that these bank issued will be rated among other based on “the likelihood of government support”. Given that governments appoint financial regulators who now use the credit risk ratings issued by the credit rating agencies to decide how much equity banks need to have, presumably so that the banks won´t fail and the governments will not have to bail them out, it is absolutely crazy that the credit rating agencies when rating the risk also measure the government´s willingness to bail out the bank. Is this dangerous and incestuous circle of opinions not sheer lunacy?

Should Snow White have known the apple was toxic?

Sir in “Shining a light on bank´s deep hole” October 1, you write about “bad bets on risky assets”. What risky assets do you refer to? To those AAA rated securities that carried so little risk that the regulators only required the banks to hold 1.6 percent equity against them?

When Snow White was offered the apple, was she supposed to have known Queen Regulator´s helpers, the credit rating agencies, had poisoned the apple?

No Mr Münchau, the world remains unstable and all the toxic fumes are ever so dangerous

Sir Wolfgang Münchau titles “How toxic finance created an unstable world” August 24 but writes that “there is no way the [financial sector] will recreate the pre-crisis levels of securitization, even if we make no changes to financial regulation”. He is wrong. That at this moment, after the monumental indigestion recently suffered the appetite is not the same, is of course right, but the truth is that the credit rating agencies are still out there waiting to be sequestered by the next generation of sub-primes (public debt?).

In fact, every day a client perceived as less risky by the credit rating agencies receives a lower funding cost through a regulatory subsidy, while a client perceived as riskier has to pay more than the market requires would otherwise require; all this courtesy of the capital requirements imposed on the banks by the Basel Committee, we live in a system rendered more unstable than needed. As if the world was not unstable enough.

But it is clear why Münchau remains confused. He says “Dollar-rich Chinese, Japanese and German investors invested in opaque product that they mistakenly deemed to be as safe as US government bonds”. Mistakenly? These instruments were rated AAA and this was considered by their financial regulators and their financial experts as a sign of a very transparent total lack of risk. Blaming the small guy aren’t we? Defending your buddies aren’t we?

The financial regulatory front lies concentrated in Basel and not fragmented in nations.

Gillian Tett feels that the pending war between the regulators and the “too big to fail” will keep on pending because the first are “badly hampered by being fragmented along national lines”, “Why the idea of ‘living wills’ is likely to die a quiet death” August 14.

She is wrong. The main sources of “too big to fail” growth resides squarely in the regulations coming out of Basel, and the real problem is that the regulators do not know how to handle Basle without risking amputating a part of themselves in the process, or worse, without prematurely using up their last “it was the Basel Committee’s fault” excuse card.

Default risk-weights and purpose-weights are used to establish capital requirements for banks in Venezuela.

Sir on July 29, in Venezuela, the financial regulator, Sudeban, issued a normative by which the risk weights used to establish the capital requirements of the banks were lowered to 50%, when banks lend to agriculture, micro-credits, manufacturing, tourism and housing. As far as I know this is the first time when these default risk-weights and which resulted from the Basel Committee regulations, are also weighted by the purpose of the loan.

The way it is done Venezuela seems to lack a lot of transparency and it could further confuse the risk allocation mechanism of the markets (though in Venezuela that mechanism has already almost been extinguished) but, clearly, a more direct connection between risk and purpose in lending is urgently needed.

In this respect the Venezuelan regulator is indeed poking a finger in the eye of the Basel regulator who does not care one iota about the purpose of the banks and only worry about default risks and, to top it up, have now little to show for all his concerns.

I can indeed visualize a system where the finance ministry issues “purpose-weights” and the financial regulator “risk-weights” and then the final weight applicable to the capital requirements of the banks are a resultant of the previous two.

Does this all sound like interfering too much? Absolutely, but since this already happens when applying arbitrary “risk weights” you could also look at this as a correction of the current interference.

What are we doing to save ourselves from subprime financial regulators in Basel?

Sir Prof Lawrence J. White in “No monopoly on credit wisdom” July 24 writes “Credit wisdom is not located solely in Moody’s Standard & Poor’s and Fitch”. He is of course absolutely right, though the real question are: Should not our financial regulators have known that before they sent the market on a wild and crazy AAA chase guided by just three credit rating agencies? How unwise can we allow our financial regulators to be?

Frankly we did not need this crisis to know that and let me remind you that on January, 12, 2003, the Financial Times published a letter I wrote and that ended with “Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic error to be propagated at modern speeds. Friends, please consider that the world is tough enough as it is.”

What are we doing in order to save ourselves from a new cull of subprime financial regulators in Basel? Not much, if anything at all.

A minimalistic comment

Sir Peter Tasker’s “Japan serves up valuable minimalist lessons” June 22, reads so true and feels so timely.