When “Eurozone sovereigns rush to lock in rates”… whom are they locking out?

Sir, I refer to Thomas Hale’s “Eurozone sovereigns rush to lock in rates” March 20.

It reads like the sovereigns were totally disconnected from their subjects. Like if they are able to lock in low rates, this would not be paid by, for instance, those pension funds that will earn less?

And if sovereigns have some inside information that rates will shoot up, and still sells a long-term bond to a citizen (a bank or an insurance company) is that not stealing? Would a citizen not be fined and sent to jail if he did something like that?

Bank regulators decided for instance that banks and insurance companies need to hold less capital when lending to sovereigns than when lending to citizens. That of course leads to sovereigns being able to borrow at lower rates than what would have been the case in the absence of such regulatory favor. And who pays for that regulatory subsidy? The “risky” SMEs and entrepreneurs pay for it; by means of less and more expensive access to bank credit. 

Sir there is such an amazing disconnect between the sovereigns and its subjects. It is as if the sovereigns have totally forgotten that their future is absolutely dependent on the future of its subjects. Or is it that current technocrats are just too statists or too dumb to understand what they are doing.

It does not help of course when influential papers like the Financial Times refuses to ask the questions that should be asked… like these:

@PerKurowski

Lucy Kellaway is sure lucky a Basel Committee for Transport Supervision does not regulate her cycling.

Note: I just added a PS that might explain the letter better.

Sir, I refer to Lucy Kellaway’s “I want to get back on my bike in spite of the dangers” April 25.

The Basel Committee for Banking Supervision decided banks need to hold more capital, which is like a sort of tax, whenever they lend money to something risky, like to SMEs and entrepreneurs; and this even though banks charge higher risk premiums and give smaller loans whenever engaging with the risky.

And so it does because even though “the risky” are clearly riskier individually to banks, the BCBS ignores that it is those perceived as safe but that could turn out risky, which represent much greater danger to the banking system. 

So lucky Lucy Kellaway, that a Basel Committee for Transport Supervision does not regulate her cycling. Because, if it did, she would be taxed by much more than the “to avoid car doors and lorries turning left [and] wear all the safety gear” she taxes herself with when riding a bike.

And that because, like the BCBS, a BCTS could similarly regard cycling as much more dangerous than any other means of transport, even though most other means of transport, for instance cars, certainly cause more deaths in London than those “more than a dozen cyclists die each year” Kellaway refers to.

So if Lucy Kellaway had to pay a BCTS cycling tax, she might not get back on her bike, and she would then feel “angry, depressed, cynical, possibly prone to heart attacks and musculoskeletal disorders”… a bit like the banks and our economies end up feeling after being submitted to BCBS’s dumb rules.

PS. An alternative explanation is that the Basel Committee for Transport Supervision would pay Lucy Kellaway and the rest of Brits a subsidy in order for them to safely travel immobile on their bottoms and avoid the risks of cycling. Would Britain be better for it?

@PerKurowski ©