Central banks and regulators are wittingly or unwittingly imposing communism by stealth, at least in Japan.

Sir, you refer to that Bank of Japan’s holdings of government bonds are already at more than 40 per cent of the outstanding stock… and to “massive equity purchases” [by means of buying into the ETF market], and to“the government is the biggest beneficiary of the BoJ’s low interest rate policy” “BoJ risks falling out of sync on global easing” August 7.

Add to that the lower capital requirements for banks when lending to the government than when lending to citizens, and it all adds up to a huge gamble on that government bureaucrats know better what to do with credit/money than private enterprises. It sure sounds too much like communism by stealth for my liking. 

In 1988 the Basel Accord assigned 0% risk weight to sovereigns and 100% to citizens and we all believed that when in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell we had gotten rid of communism for good. How can the world have been so naïve? It will of course end badly.

@PerKurowski

Basel Accord’s risk weights subsidized sovereign bonds, so since then these were no longer proxies for risk free rates

Sir, Michala Marcusssen argues that because of quantitative easing and negative interests “the proxies of sovereign bond yields for the “risk-free” rate of return is becoming an increasingly imperfect substitute with potentially dangerous consequences” “The demise of the ‘risk-free’ rate in markets”, June 14.

Marcussen refers to “a new debate on how to treat sovereign debt on bank balance sheets. At present, sovereign debt enjoys favourable treatment not just in the euro area but across the globe. Basel III allows (but does not mandate) a capital requirement of 0 per cent for sovereign bonds”

Not exactly, as I have often written to FT, the problem of a not valid proxy for the risk-free rate originated much earlier, soon 30 years ago.

The Basel Accord of 1988, Basel I, set the risk weights for sovereigns at zero percent and that of citizens at 100 percent. Since that signified a regulatory subsidy of sovereign debt, ever since we have not have had a reasonable proxy for a risk free rate.