Spurn bank regulators' false promises.

Sir, Martin Wolf makes a good case for “We should not throw liberal trade away for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way”, “Spurn the false promise of protectionism” FT June 16.

Yet, when regulators, decades ago, decided to throw liberal access to bank credit, by imposing credit risk weighted bank capital requirements, something which completely distorted the access to bank credit, Wolf and 99.99 percent of those who should have spoken up, kept mum.

Though I’ve no idea whether they read it, in a 2019 letter I wrote to the Executive Directors and Staff of the International Monetary Fund, I argued that these risk weights are to access to credit, precisely what tariffs are to trade, adding “only more pernicious” 

Wolf writes that “the US economy has suffered from high and rising inequality and a poor labour force performance” and includes among other explanations the “rent-extracting behaviour throughout the economy”

But anyone who reads “Keeping at it” 2018 in which Paul Volcker’s 2018 valiantly confessed: “The assets assigned the lowest risk, for which bank capital requirements were therefore low or nonexistent, were those that had the most political support: sovereign credits and home mortgages”, should be able to understand that rent-extraction also occurs by means of cheaper and more abundant access to credit.

And boy did regulators throw away unencumbered access to credit in “the wrong way”

Here follows four examples: 

To establish their risk weights, they used the perceived credit risks, what’s seen “under the street light” while, of course, they should have used the risks for banks conditioned on how credit risks were perceived. 

By allowing banks, when the outlook was rosy, to hold little capital, meaning paying high dividends, lots of share buy backs, and huge bonuses, they placed business cycles on steroids.

Very little of their capital requirements cover misperceived credit risks or unexpected events. Therefore, just as in 2008 with the collapse of AAA rated mortgage back securities, and now with a pandemic, banks were doomed to stand there with their pants down.

With risk weights of 0% the sovereign and 100% the citizens, which de facto imply bureaucrats know better what to do with credit they’re not personally responsible for than e.g., entrepreneurs, they smuggled communism/statism/fascism into our banking system.

“We will make your bank systems safe with our credit risk weighted bank capital requirements” Sir, what amount of wishful thinking must have existed for the world, its Academia included, to so naively have fallen for the hubristic promises of some technocrats.

@PerKurowski

Sir FT, do you, or our dear The Undercover Economist Tim Harford, have an explanation for what is a monstrous regulatory mistake?

Sir, I refer to Tim Harford’s “The Changing Face of Economics” December 19.

As an economist, if I were to regulate or supervise banks, I would mostly be concerned with bankers not perceiving the credit risk correctly. Wouldn’t you?

That’s why I cannot understand why so many economist colleagues, when acting as bank regulators, can be so dumb so as to bet our banking systems on that bankers will be able to perceive what is safe correctly. 

Let me explain it having bankers answering the four possible outcomes.

If the ex ante risky, ex post turns out safe = “Great News we helped an entrepreneur to have success”

If the ex ante risky, ex post turns out safe = “You see, that is why we lend them little and charge them high risk adjusted interest rates.”

If the ex ante safe, ex post turns out safe = “Just as we expected”

If the ex ante safe, ex post turns out risky = “Holy moly what do we now do? We lend it way too much at way too low interest rates”

But the regulators in the Basel Committee, in their Basel II of 2004, assigned risk weights of only 20% for what is so dangerous to our bank systems as what human fallible credit rating agencies have rated AAA, and a whopping 150% for what has been made so innocous, by being rated below BB-?

Sir, so do you, or our dear The Undercover Economist Tim Harford, have an explanation for what is clearly a monstrous regulatory mistake? 

Or is it that you, and our dear The Undercover Economist Tim Harford, out of sheer collegiality solidarity, both agree with such dumb regulations?

If so, let me assure you that when I studied economics, it was to learn and understand economics, not to join an economists’ union/mutual admiration club.

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2016/04/here-are-17-reasons-for-why-i-believe.html

PS Tweet: I can understand a child believing that what’s rated below BB- is more dangerous to our bank systems than what’s rated AAA, and therefore assigning a bank capital requirement of 12% to the BB- rated assets, and only 1.6% to those rated AAA. But mature professionals?

@PerKurowski

How does the European Commission propose Eurozone’s sovereigns get out of that corner into which many of them have been painted by 0% risk weights?

Sir, Mehreen Khan reports that the European Commission’s Spring forecast warned last week that: “The geographical make-up of the euro area’s fiscal stance does not reflect the adjustment needs in the high-debt member states” “The eurozone’s fight for stimulus” May 15.

If so, for how long will the European Commission back those 0% risk weights that for the purpose of bank capital requirements have been assigned to all eurozone sovereigns, even when these de facto are indebted in a currency that is not their own domestic printable one?

That risk weight translates into signaling lower interest rates for the eurozone sovereigns that what would have been the case without these distortions.

That has caused many of the eurozone sovereigns to be painted into a corner. How does the European Commission propose they get out of it? 

The euro's and thereby the EU's future depends on it

@PerKurowski

Our banking systems have been made especially fragile, because of especially bad bank regulations.

Sir, Martin Wolf writes “The world’s economy and financial systems are fragile … the most important source of fragility is political… In country after country, populists and nationalists are in, or close to, power. Salient characteristics of such politicians are myopia and entrenched ignorance. Inevitably, they spread uncertainty.” “Politics puts the skids under bull market” October 17.

In April 2003, as an Executive Director of the World Bank I delivered a statement that contained the following: "A mixture of thousand solutions, many of them inadequate, may lead to a flexible world that can bend with the storms. A world obsessed with Best Practices may calcify its structure and break with any small wind."

One of those “Best Practices” has been the risk weighted capital requirement for banks. These give banks incentives to create especially large exposures to what is perceived or decreed as especially safe, against especially little capital; making our banks, and the sector lending thereby favored, like sovereigns and houses, extremely fragile.

Populism? Sir, few things as brazenly populists as “We will make our bank systems with our risk weighted capital requirements because we sure know about risks. 

PS. Wolf, during the last annual meetings of IMF and the World Bank in Bali when interviewing Christine Lagarde, mentioned: “As a journalist I am paid to be skeptical”

But Wolf refuses to ask bank regulators about what they were thinking when they assigned a meager 20% risk weight to assets that because rated AAA represents great dangers to bank systems, compared to a whopping 150% for the so innocous below BB- rated. Sir, could it be you are not paying Wolf enough?

PS. In a similar vein during the interview Mme Lagarde said, “In IMF’s view capital flow management measures should: not be first order of priority, only be used in exceptional circumstances, not be a substitute for macroeconomic and macroprudential policies.”

So why does IMF keep mum about the risk weighted bank capital requirements? In a letter FT published in November 2004 I wrote: “our bank supervisors in Basel are unwittingly controlling the capital flows in the world.” Could it be that IMF still does not understand that that regulation distorts, controlling credit flows in favor of the “safe” present and against the “risky” future

PS. Ref the same interview: Trade protectionism? What neo-Bretton Woods Conference will be needed to help us get rid of bank regulations made to protect banks but that only endangers bank systems?

PS. Ref the same interview: Balance sheet vulnerabilities. Are not the consequences of central banks huge liquidity injections, with QEs, especially for emerging countries, precisely the same as those of the 1974 to 1981 recycling of oil revenues surpluses?

PS. Ref the same interview: Is the eurozone crisis over? “No!” says Mme Lagarde. After 20 years way too little has been done about solving the challenges of the euro and that, if not solved could bring EU down… and still Wolf categorizes his homeland Britain as “my idiotic country” because of Brexit.

PS. Ref the same interview: With respect to Greece, not a word was said about the EU authorities 0% risk weighting of Greece, which doomed it to its excessive public indebtedness.

@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

Does not “safe(ish) activities such as holding government bonds” contain the fattest most dangerous tail risks?

Sir, Gillian Tett writes “the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency introduced proposals to “tailor leverage ratio requirements to the business activities and risk profiles of the largest domestic firms”. In plain English, this means banks can operate with a little less capital to absorb losses, provided they focus on safe(ish) activities such as holding government bonds.” “Trump’s mixed record on rolling back bank reform” April 13.

The Fed’s Governor Laid Brainard, in a recent speech “An Update on the Federal Reserve's Financial Stability Agenda”said: “The primary focus of financial stability policy is tail risk (outcomes that are unlikely but severely damaging) as opposed to the modal outlook (the most likely path of the economy).”

So let me ask: What is the tail risk of “safe(ish) activities” compared to that of riskier activities?

How fat or dangerous is the tail risk of what is rated below BB-? Very skinny indeed.

How fat or dangerous is the tail risk of what is rated AAA? Very, very fat indeed.

Government bonds? When in 1988 the regulators, with Basel I, decided to assign a 0% risk-weight to some sovereigns they painted themselves into a corner. If that risk weight is not increased, then sovereigns will become, sooner or later over-indebted, and their risk will grow until it hits 100%. If that risk weight is increased, ever so slightly, markets will be very scared. How to get out of that corner is the most difficult challenge central banks and bank regulators face. Let us not forget that in 1988 US debt that was $2.6 trillion. Now it is US$21 trillion, growing, and still 0% risk weighted.

PS. The only way to solve the 0% sovereign risk weight conundrum that I see, is to increase the leverage ratio applicable to all assets, until that level where the risk weighted capital requirement totally loses its significance.

@PerKurowski

If AI was allowed to have a crack at the weights used by current risk weighted capital requirements for banks, the regulators would surely have a lot of explaining to do.

Sir, John Thornhill writes that he saw an artificial intelligence program crack in 12 minutes and 50 seconds the mindbendingly complex Enigma code used by the Germans during the second world war” “Competent computers still cannot comprehend” January 9.

I wish AI would also be asked to suggest some weights for the risk weighted capital requirements for banks.

For instance in Basel II the standardized risk weight assigned to something rated AAA, and therefore perceived as very safe, something to which banks could build up dangerous exposures, is 20%; while the risk weight for something rated below BB-, and therefore perceived to be very risky, and therefore banker won’t touch it with a ten feet pole, is 150%.

I would love to see for instance Mario Draghi’s, Mark Carney’s, and Stefan Ingves’ faces, if artificial intelligence, smilingly, came up with weights indicating a quite inverse relation between perceived risks and real dangers to a banking system.

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2016/04/here-are-17-reasons-for-why-i-believe.html

@PerKurowski

The Financial Times’ FT’s lack of curiosity is astonishing

Sir, to this date I have written you 50 letters questioning the wisdom of those bank regulators who assigned a risk weight of only 20% to what is AAA rated, and of 150% to what is below BB- rated.

It is precisely what’s perceived as very safe, AAA rated, that could cause the buildup of dangerous exposures that could result in major bank crisis if those perceptions turn out to be wrong; and it is precisely what’s perceived as very risky, below BB-, that is the most innocuous to our bank systems, since banks would never ever create any larger exposures to borrowers or investors so rated.

One could have thought that Financial Times would be interested in exploring and analyzing the arguments regulators could have been using to come up with such strange risk-weights.

But Sir you are clearly not curious at all about this. Why? Is not your motto "Without fear and without favor"?

PS. I have tried to make sense out of it all but failed

@PerKurowski

FT, you have a fake understanding on what is wrong with current bank regulations, and you have silenced my real one

Sir, Gillian Tett, your US Managing Editor, referring to the responses to an article by her titled “Why a divided America has united against the media”, July 14, strangely published only in that FT Weekend Magazine I do not receive here in Washington D.C. writes: “Readers and viewers say they want the media to be “less biased” and to “focus on the facts” but the problem of how to finance and organise serious non-partisan journalism for the mass market remains largely unsolved. The trouble is that partisan social media is free – and readers seem to be hungry for this. So how can we support real news when most voters keep flocking to entertaining stories that are (at best) partisan and (at worst) deliberately fake?” “Want to change the media? Don’t get mad – get even”, also solely in FT Weekend Magazine, July 22. 

The following is a very brief version of my relation with FT, as an opinionated subscriber.

FT and its columnists, with relation to banks’ crisis and regulations, have consistently written about deregulation and excessive risk-taking.

I on the other hand and in that respect, have with over 2.500 letters to FT consistently written to FT about misregulation and excessive risk-aversion; which results in dangerous excessive exposures against too little capital to what is ex ante perceived as safe, like sovereigns, the AAArisktocracy and residential housing, but could ex-post be very risky; and too little exposures to what is ex ante perceived as risky, like SMEs and entrepreneurs.

As one of the frontlines on this issue of the risk-weighted capital requirements for banks we find that in Basel II regulators assigned a risk-weight of only 20% to what is rated AAA to AA, and that which therefore could be very dangerous, and 150% to what is rated below BB- and that by just that fact alone is ex-ante made so innocuous to the banking system.

In one sentence, regulators regulate the banks based on the ex ante perceived risk of the banks assets, and not based on the risk ex post of the assets for the banking system.

And my criticisms have included many other aspects… like for instance the runaway statism present in the risk weights of Sovereign 0% and citizens 100%.

But for soon a decade, my arguments have been met with absolute silence, because as one of you informed me, I was just obsessed with the issue. Sir, I am reporting on a regulatory bomb that is destroying the future economy for our grandchildren, and you really don’t want me to be obsessed?

Now Tett, one of the frequent recipients of my comments writes: “the next time you complain about the media, ask yourself how you expect “fair” mass-market journalism to be funded and run – and if you are willing to pay for it. That question doesn’t let journalists off the hook: we writers need to dignify our craft. But building a better media is a task that involves journalists and non-journalists alike. Being angry is not enough; we need solutions.”

Sir, it is quite worrisome to read “Without fear and without favour” FT’s Tett confessing to “commercial pressures that are increasingly encouraging private sector media outlets to be more partisan”. Have you informed your shareholders about this? I would see it the other way, the more fakes and partisanship there is in the media, the more valuable do bastions of truth and diversity become. Or not?

Shaming out fakes and partisans must also be part of societies responsibility. For instance I have started to look for a collaborator to write a book tentatively titled “Me, Subprime Banking Regulations and FT”

@PerKurowski

All sovereign need to detox from what artificially favors their borrowings. The withdrawal symptoms will be horrendous

Sir, I refer to your “France’s detox from debt is Macron’s hardest task” July 10.

That is the task of most sovereigns in the world. If you start adding up what tax exemptions’, Basel’s 0% risk weights, and the purchase of sovereign debt through QEs’ really means in terms of subsidizing government borrowing, there is no doubt we are heading for all sovereigns having to, sooner or later, to detox from excessive debt. As the addiction to plenty and cheap debt is very much addictive to governments, I assure you the withdrawal symptoms will be horrendous. But, if they don’t withdraw from this addiction all be so much worse.

A world that in this way de-facto presupposes government bureaucrats can use bank credit for which they are not personally responsible better than the private sector is a world destined to failure.

What do current banks regulations mean? That banks can multiply many times more any net risk adjusted margin when lending to a sovereign than when lending to the private sector… and almost no one seems to find nothing wrong with that.

As the access to plentiful and cheap borrowings is very much addictive to governments, I assure you that the withdrawal symptoms will be horrendous. But, if they don’t withdraw from it we all will be so much worse.

Sir, your silence on this regulatory failure is mindboggling. Or you are statist beyond help, or dumb, or you just don’t have it in you to recognize a mistake.

@PerKurowski

In terms of creating systemic risks for our banking system, current regulators are the undisputable champions

Sir, former banker and banking lawyer Martin Lowy writes: “Dodd-Frank and Basel III capital rules have made banks and their holding companies stronger.” “How the next financial crisis won’t happen”, June 10

Well I sure know that the next financial crisis will absolutely not be the result of excessive bank exposures to something perceived as risky, as to what is rated below BB-, that to which regulators assigned a risk weight of 150%. Much more likely it will be from excessive exposures to something rated as safe as AAA, that to which regulators only assigned a meager 20% risk weight.

Really big bank crises, except from really extraordinary unexpected events, are the result of the introduction of something that can grow into a systemic risk.

What systemic risk do I see?

I see credit ratings, like when in 2003 in a letter published by FT I wrote: “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”

I see risk weighted capital requirements, like those that allow banks to leverage more with what is “safe” than with what is “risky”., and therefore distorts, for no good reason, the allocation of bank credit to the real economy.

I see standardized risk weights that impose a single set of weights on too many.

I see regulators wanting to assure that banks all apply similar approved risk models, thereby again ignoring the benefits of diversification.

I see stress tests by which regulators make banks test against the some few same stresses, as if real stresses could be so easily identified.

I see living wills, as perfectly capable to create systemic risks that at this moment are hard to see.

In all, in terms of creating dangerous systemic risks, hubris filled bank regulators aee the undisputable champions.

The main cause for that is that our bank regulators find it more glamorous to concern themselves with trying to be better bankers, than with being better regulators.

Regulators, let the banks be banks, perceive the risks and manage the risks. The faster a bank fails if its bankers cannot be good bankers, the better for all.

Your responsibility is solely related to what to do when banks fail to be good banks.

And always remember these two rules of thumb:

1. The safer something is perceived to be, the more dangerous to the system it gets; and the riskier it is perceived, the less dangerous for the system it becomes.

2. All good risk management must begin by clearly identifying what risk can we not afford not to take. In banking the risk banks take when allocating credit to the real economy is precisely that kind of risks we cannot afford them not to take.

As in 1997 I wrote in my very first Op-Ed. “If we insist in maintaining a firm defeatist attitude which definitely does not represent a vision of growth for the future, we will most likely end up with the most reserved and solid banking sector in the world, adequately dressed in very conservative business suits, but presiding over the funeral of the economy. I would much prefer their putting on some blue jeans and trying to get the economy moving.”

@PerKurowski

If bank regulators in Brussels imply for instance an AAA credit rating for Greece, should Esma not also fine them?

Sir, Nicholas Megaw and Chloe Cornish report that the European Securities and Markets Authority has fined Moody’s for “negligent breaches” of the credit rating agencies regulation “Brussels slaps €1.2m fine on Moody’s” June 2.

As Jim Brunsden and Guy Chazan reported on June 1, Brussels applies a zero risk weight to the European sovereigns. That of course can only be compatible, according to the standardized capital requirements of the Basel Committee, with the absolutely clearest AAA credit ratings.

AAA is clearly a nonsensical credit rating for many European sovereigns, like Greece, and so the question remains should Esma not fine also those European bank regulators in Brussels?

@PerKurowski

FT, is not withholding truths, for any reasons of your own, as fake, as fake news pushed for any reasons of its own?

Sir, I refer to Tim Harford’s “Hard truths about fake news”, March 4.

Given the fact that juicy/irrelevant or fake news/stories are usually so much more “interesting” for readers (like Harford and I) than many real fact based news/stories, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg clearly faces a tremendous conflict on interests. That of course because Facebook makes most (if not perhaps all of its income) when its users (like Harford and I) click on the ads attracted by these juicy/fake stories/news.

But is Harford someone to discuss this matters as an outsider? He writes in the Financial Times, and one of the greatest true financial real horror stories/news ever, must be about how bank regulators could get it so wrong so as to in Basel II assign a tiny 20% risk weight for what is so dangerous for the banking system, the AAA rated, and a huge 150% risk weight to the totally innocuous below BB- rated. But, has FT picked up on that? No! 

Because of some unexplained internal reasons FT knows best of, notwithstanding my soon 2.500 letters on subprime banking regulations, notwithstanding its motto of “without fear and without favour”, FT has kept mum on that story.

Sir, is not withholding truths, for any reasons of your own, just as fake as fake news pushed for commercial, political or any other reasons of its own? 

PS. Harford writes: “as a loyal FT columnist, I need hardly point out that the perfect newspaper is the one you’re reading right now”. That is an interesting point, which begs the question: Is columnists’ loyalty to their own newspaper something crucial for good journalism or good newspapers?

PS. Harford writes: “Reading the same newspaper every day is a filter bubble too.” Oops, careful there Tim, you are entering into the very delicate theme of groupthink and intellectual incest.

@PerKurowski

Are risk weights of: Sovereign 0%, We the People 100%, imposed arbitrarily by regulators, compatible with democracy?

Sir, David Pilling refers to a recent paper by Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk, that cites findings in the World Values Survey, asking Americans whether they approve of the idea of “having the army ‘take over’. In 1995, one in 16 agreed. Since then, that number has risen steadily to one in six.”, “A continent where the democratic dream lives on” December 8.

I come from a country, Venezuela, in which each day more and more people are toying with the idea of calling in a “new” military, not to have less democracy, but to have more.

And so perhaps the American’s desilusion with democracy that the survey hints at might also reflect that democracy has failed being democracy.

For instance, is the decision process going on in Brussels really compatible with the European democracies? Those voting for Brexit seems to have answered NO!.

And in America, the regulators, for the purpose of setting the capital requirements for banks, surreptitiously set risk weights of 0$% for the Sovereign and 100% for We the People. And that, which is something that clearly reads like a slap in the face of its Founder Fathers, seems as big failure of democracy as they can come. 

So in America, supposedly the world’s prime capitalistic society, statism was imposed. Democratically? No way Jose! 

@PerKurowski

Using Basel Committee’s standardized risk weights could also be worse than using banks' internal risk models.

Sir I refer to Caroline Binham’s, Laura Noonan’s and Jim Brunsden’s “Basel fails to agree key risk measures” December 1.

Currently: The lower the risk - the lower the capital requirement - the higher the leverage - and so the higher the risk adjusted return on equity. Therefore it is clear that, as long as bank shareholders and bank creditors do not own 100% of the skin in the game, you cannot leave it in the hands of banks to use their own internal risk models. The conflict of interest with these is too much to handle for even the most disciplined banker. You would not like your kids to decide the nutritional values of their diets…would you?

But Sir, Basel II’s standardized risk weights makes it clear you can much less place the responsibility in hands of regulators who have no idea about what they are doing. Just an example: for an asset rated AAA to AA they assigned a 20% risk weight, while for what’s rated below BB-, something which would therefore never constitute a major danger for banks, that received a 150% risk weight.

And regulators assigning 0% risk weight to sovereigns, and 100% to We the People, more than regulators, seem to be simple statism activists.

@PerKurowski

I don’t understand how the British people can accept so quietly the Basel Committee’s risk weights.

Sir, Elaine Moore writes: “British debt — one of the oldest securities in the world whose roots can be traced back to King William III’s desire to fund a war in France — should be relatively straightforward. Domestic and international investors regard the UK as a safe bet” “FT Big Read: UK Gilt complexities” September 15.

Moore ignores here the effect of current bank regulations but I must say, to me, as an outsider, it is truly hard to understand how, in these days, the British people allow the Basel Committee to assign them a risk weight of 100% while giving the AAArisktocracy one of only 20% and the Sovereign a 0%.

Where would Britain have been today had these risk weights, that clearly discriminate against the access to bank credit of SMEs and entrepreneurs, been in place since King William III’s days?

Don’t you think that your governments have it easy enough to sell gilt without having to give it this regulatory subsidy?

I wonder if anyone at BoE has given the slightest thought to where interest rates on new gilt sold would be, without a little help from the Basel Committee?

Sir, doesn’t anyone in FT know that the “little help” is paid by the lesser or more expensive access to bank credit of some other? 

@PerKurowski ©

For sturdy returns on equity, banks must abandon their dangerous road of maximizing returns by minimizing equity.

Harriet Agnew and Patrick Jenkins write: “This manner of doing business in which a handful of influential individuals could orchestrate the markets [1986]… In today’s terms would be completely illegal” “Big Bang II What’s next for the city?”

What? A handful of individuals orchestrated the markets more than ever when, for instance with Basel I in 1988, for the purpose of setting the capital requirements for banks, they decreed the risk weights of the Sovereign to be 0% and that of 100% We the People 100%.

And the authors quote Pierre-Henri Flamand with: “Brexit may mean a reverse Big Bang for the UK’s relationship with Europe… But it could mean Big Bang II for its relationship with the rest of the world. Brexit could improve the City’s prospects of doing business in parts of the world such as Asia and Africa where the growth is”

And on that I agree, but only if the banks go back to being banks making returns on equity by means of reasonably audacious banking, abandoning that dead-end road of maximizing returns by minimizing equity.

If they don’t then I guess we will have to endure other types of Big Bangs, like the on I was referring to when in 1999 I wrote: “The possible Big Bang that scares me the most is the one that could happen the day those genius bank regulators in Basel, playing Gods, manage to introduce a systemic error in the financial system, which will cause the death of the last financial dinosaur that survives at that moment.”

Since they introduced that systemic risk, risk weighted capital requirements for banks, and even after the 2007-08 crisis insist on keeping it, I still fear that a truly Bad Big Bang is closer than any Big Bang II.

In short, if the City wants to maintain or even gained competitiveness, then it must recreate itself in a non-distorted way. Escaping the the influence of the Basel Committee is much more important for Britain and its banks (and for all other nations) than any Brexit or no Brexit.

@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 ©

Basel risk-weights: Sovereign 0% - We The People 100%. How on earth did we fall into that idiotic statist trap?

Sir, David Stubbs discusses accurately many risks with sovereign debt, risks that are not new, have never been, but that are appearing more clearly now. “Sovereign bonds can steady a ship but their anchor days are over” July 28.

But what Stubbs leaves out is the amazing fact that, for the purpose of risk-weighing the capital requirements for banks, the Basel Accord, Basel I, in 1988, set the risk-weight for the sovereign at 0% and that of “We The People” at 100%... and no one said a damn word about it. The only discussions thereafter were promoted by some shadier sovereigns that also wanted to be risk-weighted at 0%.

Sir, you can be sure of one thing, Greece, independently of how much it hid information, would never have been able to get so much credit, had there not been for the minimalistic bank capital requirements against its loans.

Runaway statism is what was, and is, behind it all. By allowing banks to leverage their equity so much more with sovereigns’ debts than with citizens’ debts, they allow banks to earn much higher “expected” risk-adjusted returns on equity when lending to sovereigns than when lending to citizens, so banks will favor lending to sovereigns over lending to citizens.

And that means de facto that bank regulators are acting as believing government bureaucrats know better what to do with bank credit than citizens. How on earth did we fall into that trap?

Would the actual level of sovereign debts around the world be sustainable without the regulatory subsidies? That is indeed a nasty question.

PS. A letter in FT November 2004 “How many propositions will it take before the Basel Committee, the bank regulators, start realizing the damage they are doing by favoring so much bank lending to the public sector.”

@PerKurowski ©

If IMF seems to favor the private sector, rest assure it is favoring even more its shareholders, the governments.

Sir you write “International Monetary Fund last week…published an article questioning its own neoliberal tendencies…concluding that “instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion”. And you describe it, marvelously imaged, with that “In seeking to be trendy, the IMF instead looks as out of date as a middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap backwards”, “A misplaced mea culpa for neoliberalism” May 31.

My opinion though is that if a mea culpa should be forthcoming from the IMF that should have more to do with how they allowed the label neoliberalism to cover up for statism. For instance most public services privatized in Latin America were awarded based on who offered to pay the governments the most, not on who offered to charge the lowest tariffs; and so all money received became de facto tax advances to governments, to be later covered by customers having to pay higher tariffs. Neoliberalism? Hah!

John Williamson coined the term “The Washington Consensus” that was rightly or wrongly adopted as a stand in for neoliberalism, in 1989.

The year before, the Basel Accord, determined that for the purpose of setting the capital requirements for banks, the risk weight of sovereigns, at least those of the OECD, was zero percent, while the risk weight of citizens, the private sector, was 100 percent.

What neoliberalism can thrive along side such virulent statism as that displayed by the Basel Committee?

Let us not fool ourselves; IMF represents the governments, not the private sector, not the citizens. If it does something that seems to favor the private sector, the citizens, rest assure it is by doing so favoring governments even more.

@PerKurowski ©