Is allowing banks earn the highest risk adjusted returns on equity with what’s “safe” a nudge, a sludge or a grudge?

Sir, Tim Harford writes “Nudge, sludge or grudge, we can change this. And we should start by asking ourselves whether when it comes to news, information and debate, we have made it difficult to do the right thing — and all too easy to stray.” “Nudging and the art of darkness” November 10.

Art of darkness? How and by whom were our bank regulators nudged into believing that stupidity that what bankers perceive as risky is dangerous and that what is perceived by them as safe is safe?

Because as a consequence we got the risk-weighted capital requirements for banks that allow banks to leverage much more with what is perceived as safe than with what is perceived as risky; which means banks will earn higher risk adjusted returns on equity with what’s “safe” than with what’s “risky”; which means banks will, dangerously for the bank system, lend too much against too little capital to what’s safe, and, dangerously for the real economy, lend too little to what is perceived as risky like SMEs and entrepreneurs.

PS. When I try to see what @TimHarford is up to, I am given the message “You are blocked from following @TimHarford and viewing @TimHarford’s tweets”. Does Tim Harford believe it is so easy to get away from my arguments?

PS. What would Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay burned in 1307 say about a 0% risk-weightof sovereign Phillip IV?

PS. “50 Things That Made the Modern Economy”, and just 1 That is Bringing it Down: Regulatory Risk Aversion 

https://teawithft.blogspot.com/2017/03/ft-is-not-withholding-truths-for-any.html

@PerKurowski

Perceptions change realities. In banking, what’s perceived risky is safe and what’s perceived safe is dangerous

Sir, John Authers writes: “It is not the risks we worry about that harm us. It is what Donald Rumsfeld once called the “unknown unknowns” that we were not thinking about and did not even know about. In markets, assets deemed high risk tend to be priced so that they do little harm when things go wrong”, “Crises happen when what is thought to be safe surprises us”, November 11.

Precisely. So how would now Authers explain the logic behind the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, the pillar of current bank regulations? That which in Basel II risk weighted what is AAA rated with 20% and the below BB- with 150%. That which by allowing banks different leverages for different assets senselessly distorts the allocation of bank credit. That and about which I have written more than 2.600 letters to FT and that it has decided to ignore.

Sir, when will you dare to wake up to that harrowing fact that our banks are in the hands of regulators that have no idea of what they are up to? Or do you really think that all this is a minor problem?

@PerKurowski

A bank regulator should not act like a banker, but think about how bankers act.

Sir, Sushil Wadhani and Michael Dicks remind us of Keynes´ teachings in that when picking winners of a beauty contest “rather than pick whom one believes to be the most beautiful person, it is best to pick those whom others might judge so”, “Investors must gauge perceived – ‘not true’ – chances of disasters” July 27. 

We sure wish bank regulators had headed that advice. Their capital requirements for banks were set based on ex-ante perceived risk, like credit ratings, and thinking of it almost as true risk. Basel II required for instance 1.6 percent when lending to a triple-A rated client and 8 percent, five times more, when lending to a small unrated business. 

Had the regulators instead set these requirements based on how the bankers would judge and act on the perceptions of risk, and had they also read about Mark Twain’s banker, he who lends you the umbrella when the sun shines and takes it away when it looks like it is going to rain, then they would have set the capital requirements for lending to the AAAs higher than when lending to a small unrated business, and this crisis would not have happened.

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.