FT, I’ve blown the whistle on bank regulator’s foul play many times. But Gillian Tett does not want to hear it. Why?

Sir, I refer to Gillian Tett’s “Finance needs to blow the whistle on foul play” May 28.

I have sure blown my whistle. On my TeaWithFT blog I have, with this, 141 comments directed to Gillian Tett over the years. Surely more than half of these have to do with the lunacy of bank regulators.

With their credit-risk-weighted capital (equity) requirements for banks, that favors lending to what is perceived as safe over what is perceived as risky (as if that would be needed) they manipulate and distort the bank credit markets… clearly foul play. And all that for absolutely no good reason, since all major bank crisis have only resulted from excessive exposures to what was ex ante perceive as risky but that ex post turned out to be risky.

Sir, could you please ask Ms. Tett, as an anthropologist, to explain why journalists like her give so much more credence to those who for unexplained reasons have been named bank regulators, than to ordinary bankers who at least have to compete with other bankers… or citizens like me?

For instance from where can a professional like Ms. Tett derive the notion that a Mario Draghi, just because he was named chair of the Financial Stability Board by some unknown bureaucrats, knows more about risk managements and how banks should behave than any ordinary banker or finance professional?

If simply stating: “I am the regulator” makes someone less prone to make mistakes or to behave badly than the one being regulated, and to have that nonsense believed by journalists, then we are definitively screwed.

PS. For instance, before the approval of Basel II, I loudly blew the whistle on the dangerous systemic risks of using credit rating agencies too much in bank regulations… both as an Executive Director at the World Bank and in FT. Nobody wanted to hear it  L

Amazing how an anthropologist, like Gillian Tett, can believe that our financial markets are driven by lust for risks

Sir, Gillian Tett writes: “if we want to avoid a replay of 2007, we must keep questioning our assumptions — and peering at the parts of the system that seem “boring”, “geeky” and “dull”. Our mental bins can sometimes hold time-bombs” “The next crash risk is hiding in plain sight” August 10.

Indeed! And one of the greatest drivers of such time-bombs is confusing ex ante perceived risks with ex post risks.

But Ms. Tett also writes “Sometimes, market shocks occur because investors have taken obviously risky bets — just look at the tech bubble in 2001”. What? Does FT’s in house anthropologist really believe investors were taking “obviously risky bets”? Was it not much more the illusion of very high-risk adjusted returns that caught the investors’ attention?

But Ms. Tett also writes: “Most investors assume that Treasuries are the risk-free pillar of modern finance”. What? If there is anyone who has really assumed that, it is the bank regulators when they, in 1988, with Basel I, began to assign 0% risk-weights to sovereigns.

Ms. Tett also writes “precisely because the system has become so flush with cash — and seemingly calm — there is complacency; and not just about the dangers of clearly risky bets (say, Argentine bonds), but about the perils of “safe” assets too”.

Not really, the complacency about clearly risky bets is almost non-existent when compared to that related to safe assets.

As an example of riskiness Tett points out “an obscure “Inverse Vix” ETF that benefits from low volatility… the world’s 34th most actively traded equity security…[and] that has returned almost 100 per cent this year. What? Is she really arguing that something which offered the expectations of large returns and that has actually provided almost 100 per cent return this year, is riskier than holding 10 year German bunds yielding certain negative rates?

Sir, it is so hard to understand how Ms. Tett, and most of you, even when acknowledging that “The next crash risk is hiding in plain sight”, seem unable to wrap your minds around the fact that what is really dangerous, for instance to our banking system, is what is perceived as safe… and that therefore the current risk weighted capital requirements, besides dangerously distorting the allocation of bank credit to the real economy, are incredibly dumb.

Sir, were you a part of the inquisition, you would most certainly be prosecuting Galileo.

@PerKurowski

Gillian Tett also suffers from "biases in our brains that undermine our capacity to make rational decisions”

Sir, Gillian Tett writes on the issue of “how bad humans are at assessing risk”, and refers to that “academics Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have highlighted all manner of biases in our brains that undermine our capacity to make rational decisions.” “Fear of cultural ‘pollutants’ can be allayed with acceptance”, February 11.

As an example, Tett mentions that in the US “the data suggest that the chance of dying in a terrorist attack by a refugee, of any religion, was just one in 3.64bn in any given year. That is far lower than the risk of being struck by lightning”. Yet Tett writes, there is “irrational” fear of immigrants.

Ms. Tett, should perhaps do well showing more humility because, like all of us, she is just as bound to be afflicted by exactly the same human weakness. 

There is no data that would indicate that any major bank crisis was caused by excessive bank exposures to something perceived as risky when placed on balance sheets; and all data points that the real dangers lies with what is perceived as very safe, yet Ms Tett, her colleagues, and most of the bank regulation community see nothing strange with risk weights of 20% for what is AA to AA rated and 150% for the below BB-.

Ms Tett writes “There is little point in countering people’s “irrational” fear of immigrants by throwing statistics about or dismissing Trump’s supporters as “racist”.

Sir, I am of course not talking about racism, but should I not insist, as I do, day after day, with thousands of letters, in trying to illuminate those that who by favoring the dangerous safe, actually discriminate against the access to bank credit of the innocuous risky?

Over the last decade, around the world, millions of SMEs and entrepreneurs have seen their begging for an opportunity denied by sheer financial regulatory bigotry. And Sir, you are well aware that FT shamefully keeps mum on it.

@PerKurowski

Current “pre-existing conditions” would mean nothing when complete genomic sequences enter the health insurance world

Sir, Gillian Tett writes “most consumers have not fully considered the consequences of genetic profiling: is it a good idea, say, to discover through a genetic profile a vulnerability to Alzheimer’s? What will that mean for life insurance policies and data privacy?”, “The importance of socks in the genomic revolution” March 17.

Indeed, imagine if a full genomic sequence is obtainable at a really low price, what stops then insurance companies from offering two plans, one for those who want to present their full DNA result, and one for those who prefer to keep these confidential? What would the differences in premiums be?

In 2000, in the now extinct Daily Journal of Caracas, I wrote an Op-Ed titled “Human genetics made inhuman”. In it I tackled some of the problems to which Ms. Tett refers.

I ended that article with: “suggesting that all insurance companies design a plan which obligates them to issue policies for all of those who undertake a genetic examination. This policy should cover the negative impact and consequence that could arise from anyone getting access to such information.”

Would that suffice? Clearly not, but just the existence of such an insurance, and seeing the premiums charged, could be a smart way for us to allow the market indicate us what kind of social troubles we are getting into. This because clearly what we currently refer to the problems in health insurance with “pre-existing conditions”, would all be baby talk when compared to the societal impacts of genomic sequencing.

I worried about this in 2000, as others must have been worrying earlier, and here Gillian Tett brings it up in 2017. What has happened in this respect during that interval? Has someone somewhere been thinking on how to tackle this formidable societal challenge? Probably not! If so, why? Or is this just another question of those that should not be asked?

PS. In 2015, in a letter to FT, I asked: “What would Gillian Tett say if one of her health record entrepreneurs, by means of an innocent mistake, entered a data that for instance hindered one of her children to enter a university that had decided that the expected longevity of students was good for its funding drives?

When securitization wedded the capital requirements for banks, the subprime mortgages' inferno overheated.

Sir, I refer to Gillian Tett’s “Unorthodox answers to the inflation enigma” April 1.

Ms Tett writes: “If the Fed, or any central bank, wants an illustration of why ethnographic research matters, they need only look at the last credit bubble, when most economists missed the subprime mortgage boom because they shunned on-the-ground research. Fed officials need to get into consumers’ lives. Or else hire a few anthropologists to work with those office-bound, and baffled, economists.”

Unfortunately central bankers have yet to understand the missed subprime mortgage boom, and so has anthropologists like Gillian Tett.

Anyone who has read Kirsten Grind’s spectacular tale of the Washington Mutual failure “The Lost Bank” 2012, Gillian Tett has praised it, should have been intrigued by a question the book poses but that remains unanswered. Why was there especially such huge demand for basically the lousiest mortgages?

An objective researcher would then have found that combining the dark secret of securitization, with the importance given to the credit rating agencies for determining the capital requirements for banks, created a temptation impossible for any ordinary humans to resist.

What “dark secret of securitization”? That the worse the assets to be securitized are, the more can those involved in the securitization process profit. Selling of a $300.000, 30 years, 11 percent mortgage, packaged in a security for which an investor thought that 6 percent was a great return, would immediately yield $210.000 in profits.

And on credit ratings, if a security got an AAA to AA rating, then the banks, according to Basel II, needed only to hold 1.6 percent in capital against it, and were therefore allowed to leverage a mind-blowing 62.5 times to 1.

The problem with any central bank research though, is that it would lay much blame on all central bankers involved with bank regulations… and, among colleagues, we can’t have that, can we?

Oh how I wish Kirsten Grind would go back to the subprime inferno and research the causes for why it overheated.

@PerKurowski ©

Is the financial transmission mechanism muddled? Yes, that is to say the least.

Sir, Gillian Tett writes that the “bigger worry is that the benefits of QE3 are so unclear, because the transmission mechanism is so muddled”, “Beware the high costs and psychology of America’s QE3.” September 21. 

And Tett reports on Richard Fisher, head of the Dallas Fed saying: “Nobody on the [Fed] committee… really knows what is holding back the economy. Nobody really knows what will work to get the economy back on course. The very people we wish to stoke consumption and final demand by creating jobs and expanding business investments are not responding to our [Fed] policy initiatives as well as theory suggests”. 

Muddled transmission mechanism indeed! How could it not be so when capital requirements for banks favor so much the lending to those perceived as “not-risky” and thereby discriminates so much against those perceived as “risky”. 

But I know for sure what is at least an absolute sine qua non to get the economy back on track, and that is getting rid of those discrimination based on perceived risks, and which almost amount to a class war waged by the “not-risky” against the “risky. 

It is the action of the “risky” which normally builds the muscles of an economy. Those “not risky” slowly, or fast, over time, most often turn into flabby fat. 

And Gillian Tett should know this after all the letters I have sent to FT, and to her, explaining the above. But, then again, as she recently wrote in “An internet free for all read by none” September 15, “People are clustering into tribes… only reading information that reaffirms their pre-existing social and political world view”, and, since I do not really belong to her mutual adoration tribe, she might not even have read my letters. 

PS. As I am putting together a Stupid Bank Regulations 101, for the benefit of those who like Martin Wolf do not get it, perhaps Gillian Tett would also like to take advantage of it.

Gillian Tett, Anthony Bourdain and Selena Gomez might not explain it all in the “The Big Short”

Sir, I refer to Gillian Tett’s discussion of “The Big Short”, a film based on Michael Lewis’s bestselling book. “Finance gets the Hollywood treatment” November 28.

Tett writes: “We have Anthony Bourdain, the famous chef, standing in a kitchen, describing how a CDO is similar to fish stew (bankers resold old mortgages by mixing them up into fresh broth, just as chefs conceal old fish by turning it into soup). We also see the actress Selena Gomez elaborating the principles of synthetic derivatives while sitting in a casino, placing chips on a table, as groupies mimic her bets.”

I have not seen the film yet but, if Anthony Bourdain did not include mentioning the fact that the quality of the fish stew was to be determined by some very few fish-stew rating agencies; and that the casino in which Selena Gomez placed bets had abandoned the traditional payout scheme in which all bets have exactly the same expected economic value, in favor of one where the safer bets, black or red, pay more than the risky bets, a number, then the film does not fully explain what happened.

Gillian Tett writes “a decade ago [she] was alarmed by the bubble brewing in complex finance…” and indeed in January 2007 she wrote “The unease bubbling in today’s brave new world”

Myself, as an Executive Director of the World Bank, in a formal statement I delivered in October 2004, have also done my fair share of warning writing: “We believe that much of the world’s financial markets are currently being dangerously overstretched through an exaggerated reliance on intrinsically weak financial models that are based on very short series of statistical evidence and very doubtful volatility assumptions”. And in January 2003 in FT I had warned about allowing credit ratings to become a systemic risk.

@PerKurowski ©

Gillian Tett would do better advising “the risky” on how to fend off bank regulators… pro-bono of course

Sir, Gillian Tett hands out her disinterested advice on “How savvy asset managers can fend off the regulators” May 15. Although most of them are grown up men who can take care of themselves, some of “Society’s lottery winners” might indeed appreciate her concerns about their wellbeing.

That said I believe that the small businesses and entrepreneurs would be much more appreciative of Ms. Tett’s efforts on how they can fend off the regulators. You see Sir, these borrowers have seen their access to bank credit drastically curtailed, as a result of regulators allowing banks to hold much less equity when lending to the infallible sovereign or to members of the AAArisktocracy than when lending to them.

Ms. Tett who has so much access to hotshots, could she perhaps put a word in for “the risky”, by reminding regulators that these borrowers, though they do suffer a lot from bank crises, they have never ever caused one? It could perhaps also be useful for Ms. Tett to remind regulators that the future health of the economy, that on which banks’ stability most depends on, is helped by “the risky” having fair access to bank credit.

Please Ms. Tett… look at is as a good pro-bono community service. 

@PerKurowski

When will someone invited dare to pose the question that shall not be made at a Davos or Jackson Hole gathering?

Sir, Gillian Tett writes: “The International Monetary Fund calculates that between 1970 and 2011, the world has suffered 147 banking crises... But whatever their statistical size, the pre-crisis period is marked by hubris, greed, opacity — and a tunnel vision among financiers that makes it impossible for them to assess risks.”, “When the world held its breath” September 1.

Sir, and why should regulators, who impose risk weighted capital requirements for banks, and stress test these be less affected by that “tunnel vision”? 

If regulators knew about conditional probabilities, if they absolutely wanted and dared to distort the allocation of bank credit, they would have set their risk weights based, not on the perceived risks of assets, but on how bankers’ perceive and manage risks.

Tett quotes Alan Greenspan with “I originally assumed that people would act in a wholly rational way, that turned out to be wrong.” Shame on him, had he just done his homework, he would have known that what was perceived as risky never ever causes financial crises, that is always the role of what was thought as very safe.

Tett also quotes Paul Tucker, the former deputy governor of the Bank of England with, “There is a dynamic which pushes banking and the penumbra of banking to excess, over and over again”. That “dynamic” force was the regulators pushing bankers into excesses, for instance by allowing them to leverage 62.5 times if only an AAA to AA rating issued by human fallible credit rating agencies was present.

Tett recounts: “One day in the early summer of 2007, I received an email out of the blue from an erudite Japanese central banker called Hiroshi Nakaso”, who warned her “that a financial crisis was about to explode because of problems in the American mortgage and credit market.” 

Tett was astonished, though she did, by then, not disagree with the analysis. May 19th 2007 I wrote the following letter to FT, which was not published.

“Sir, after reading Gillian Tett’s “A headache is in store when the credit party fizzles out” May 19, it is clear we should all go down on our knees and pray for that she is right, in that it is only a headache that is in store for us. 

As for myself I have serious doubts that the consequence of this blissful-ignorance-bubble resulting from our hide-and-not-seek the risks with derivatives, is unfortunately going to be much more painful than that. When that day comes though, before putting the sole blame on the poor bankers earning their luxurious daily keep; I suggest we look much closer at the responsibility of our financial regulators.”

Sir, sadly, that suggestion has been way too much ignored until now. 

“Why do you require banks to hold more capital against what by being perceived as risky is made less dangerous to our bank systems, than against what by being perceived as safe, poses so many more dangers?” That is the questions that seemingly shall not be asked by anyone who markets his name in the debate and does not want to risk being left out from Davos or Jackson Hole gatherings.

PS. Here is somewhat more extensive aide memoire on the mistakes in the risk weighted capital requirements for banks.

@PerKurowski

Sorry, Gillian, try acting like a better financial journalist

Sir, Gillian Tett holds that “banks need to redefine why they exist. A new sense of mission and modus operandi is required, “Don´t just say sorry, Bob, try acting like a steward” July 3. 

But in a much similar vein, I could also ask Gillian Tett to try acting as a better financial journalist, and inform her readers that, in all the bank regulations produced by the Basel Committee, there is not one single word that pertains to what the purpose of the banks is and, notwithstanding that, the regulators still gladly proceed to regulate, totally unencumbered. 

Ms. Tett also mentions Mr. John Taft of Royal Bank of Canada´s request that banks act as wise stewards of the nation´s cash. How are they supposed to do that? Ms. Tett must know by now that function has already been usurped by the bank regulators who, with great hubris, act like the self appointed risk managers of the world, and allocate, in a very haphazardous way, the risk-weights which determine the capital requirements for the banks… and thereby really determine the directions of the nation´s cash. 

Over to you Ms. Tett, try to inform your readers more completely.

The reason why banks “dance around tough capital rules” is that regulators play the music that invites them to do so.

Sir, I refer to Gillian Tett writing about hedge funds and banks moving into the P2P sector, “The sharing economy is a playground for Wall Street” September 25.

Ms. Tett writes: “banks used structured investment vehicles and collateralised debt… to dance around tough capital rules”.

That ignores that the reason why banks can “dance around tough capital rules” is that there are different capital rules. If for instance banks needed to hold for instance the basic Basel II capital requirement of 8 percent against all assets, there simply would be no music to dance to.

And Ms. Tett writes: “the system needs to provide more credit to the economy, in order to boost growth… If you ask bankers why they are moving into P2P lending, some will point to the high returns they hope to earn (since the average loan commands an interest rate of around 13 per cent, margins are high).”

Does Ms. Tett really believe that loans at 13 percent, in an almost zero rate environment, will help boost growth?

And Ms. Tett writes: “if you think that the main goal of finance should be to create safe, clear rules for capital flows… then the arrival of banks and hedge funds [to P2P sector]… might make you weep”

Ms. Tett still does not understand what is going on. Risk weighted capital requirements give banks the incentive of being able to leverage their equity immensely when lending to those perceived safe; and which forces the “risky” to have to pay both a bankers’ risk premium and a regulator’s risk premium. The natural result is banks will lend dangerously much to the safe and dangerously little to the risky… and that is what should make us weep.

And Ms. Tett writes: “[Banks] also took advantage of cracks in regulatory structures to create products that policymakers could not easily monitor or control (it was unclear, for instance, who was supposed to oversee mortgage derivatives).” 

What cracks? Basel II clearly spelled out that if a security was monitored by one of the few credit rating agencies, and obtained an AAA rating, then the banks could leverage 62.5 times to 1 their equity. 

And Ms. Tett writes: “unlike the pension funds which were exposed to mortgage-backed securities in 2006, for example, the banks and hedge funds understand the dangers of credit losses.”

I am not sure I would agree with that assessment. Too many banks, especially European had no understanding at all of the dangerous amounts of credit losses that could happen if the demand for mortgages to be packaged in securities, exceeded by much the capacity to rationally finance the purchase of houses.

Sir, since January 2007 I have written you around 150 letters in reference to articles by Ms. Tett; and of course copied her. Most of them have to do with explaining why credit-risk weighted capital requirements for a bank is such a flawed and dangerous concept. Even if I assume she has not read one single of those letters, she should have learned more about it after so many years.

Ms. Tett as the expert in anthropology you are: What would have happened with humans had some Basel Committee nannies given them so much incentives to stay safe in their caves and not venture out into the risky world? May I advance the possibility they would have ended up extinguished in their safe caves?

Per Kurowski

@PerKurowski

If they do not belong to her The Group, the tribe, Gillian Tett does not seem to read what her readers write to her.

Sir, Gillian Tett writes “Echoes of 2008 as danger signs are ignored ” and mentions the “Jackson Hole tribe barely mentioned these at all”. “We had all better hope that by the summer of 2017 a debate about finance gets a proper billing at Jackson Hole” September 2.

I invite you here to read the probably more than hundred letters I have sent Ms Tett over the years, but that she has decided to ignore, probably because I do not belong to her The Group.

Who am I? Just a former Executive Director of the World Bank who, in October 2004, in a formal statement delivered at the Board wrote:

“Phrases such as ‘absolute risk-free arbitrage income opportunities’ should be banned in our Knowledge Bank. We believe that much of the world’s financial markets are currently being dangerously overstretched through an exaggerated reliance on intrinsically weak financial models that are based on very short series of statistical evidence and very doubtful volatility assumptions.”

In January 2003, in FT, I warned “that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic errors, about to be propagated at modern speeds”

Here are more of my documented early opinions (1997-2004) on bank regulations

So what would I like Ms Tett to do? To be more than a groupie and do her job asking those she might meet in Jackson Hole, Davos and similar The Group meetings, some of the too many questions that have gone unasked by journalists over the last soon 30 years, like:

How have you defined the purpose of banks before regulating these?

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.” John A Shedd, 1850-1926

Why do you base your capital requirements on the ex ante perceived risks?

“May God defend me from my friends. I can defend myself from my enemies” Voltaire.

Had Tett, or any other important financial journalist, like Martin Wolf, asked some of these questions much earlier, we might not have the need to even reference 2008.

The Basel Accord, Basel I, 1988, set the risk weight of the Sovereign at 0% and that of We the People at 100%... which de facto means that regulators believe government bureaucrats give better use to bank credit than the private sector… something that most of us on Main Street and who are not runaway statists, would find sort of questionable.

@PerKurowski ©

Could Gillian Tett possibly find something positive in removing the incentives for banks to lend to SMEs and entrepreneurs?

Sir, Gillian Tett, discussing whether to have or not to have bins, as these could be used by terrorists writes: “Losing them shows …– that trust and confidence can unravel in the face of terrorism and fear. Indeed, the symbolism is so stark that I am tempted to argue that it is a mistake to “give in” by removing those bins; in statistical terms, the risk of actually dying in a terrorist bomb attack is exceptionally small.” “Don’t throw our bins away” September 24. 

Well, the risk of having a bank crisis resulting from excessive exposures to what was ex ante perceived as risky, is exceptionally small, I would say none. Yet bank regulators clearly gave in to some imagined fear and decided the capital requirements for banks should be much higher for what is perceived as risky, than for what is much more dangerous, namely what is perceived as safe. 

And contrary to how Ms. Tett might find something positive in the removal of bins, and which with one could agree, I cannot understand what positive one could possibly find in removing the incentives for banks giving loans to “risky” SMEs and entrepreneurs; those who in fact most need bank credit; those who we in fact most want to have bank credit, so that our economies do not stall and fall. 

Perhaps Ms. Tett would be interested in reading a recent working paper published by the ECB, “The limits of model-based regulation”. It shows that some of those who like Ms. Tett with close to willful blindness trusted Basel’s risk based regulations, are now reluctantly beginning to have some serious doubts. 

@PerKurowski ©

Regulators gave banks great incentives to smoke around drum barrels marked “empty”, and to stay away from drums marked “full”.

Gillian Tett writes “before 2008 the big banks spent a great deal of time fretting about issues that seemed obviously risky — hedge funds or highly leveraged companies — but tended to ignore anything that seemed safe or boring, such as AAArated mortgage-backed securities” “What the Hopi culture teaches us about risk” June 23.

Sir, if you go to my TeaWithFT blog and click on Gillian Tett, you will find that over the years I must have written her at least 100 letters explaining that what is perceived as risky, drums marked “full”, is never as dangerous than what’s perceived as safe, drums named “empty”. 

But, if a 70 year old paper by US fire-safety inspector Benjamin Lee Whorf, based a lot on Hopi Native American culture, is more convincing to Ms. Tett than my arguments, so be it.

My real complaint though is that Ms. Tett only refers to what bankers did, and does not mention the fact that bank regulators, on top of it all, with their risk weighted capital requirements, allowed banks to smoke (leverage) much more around drums named “empty”, than around drums named “full”. 

So when Ms. Tett writes: “In theory, this danger has now receded: banks have been trained to take a more holistic view of risk and to question whether even AAA ratings are always safe”, let us not forget that with Basel II, regulators allowed bank to leverage a mindboggling 62.5 times if only an AAA to AA rating was present. Since that besserwisser regulatory mentality still prevails, and risk weighting derived incentives still exists, unfortunately I do not share the hope that dangers have receded. New dangerous “absolutely safe” always lurk around the corners.

And Sir, come on, we have European central bankers who told banks “You can smoke as much as you like around that 0% risk weighted drum named Greece”; and they have still not been made accountable for that… and, between you and I, you FT is not entirely without blame for that.

PS. The sad complement to this analysis is that what regulators decreed as drums marked “full”, and made banks stay away from, includes entrepreneurs and SMEs, something which must erode the dynamism of the economy. 

@PerKurowski

Based on the flimsy notion that below BB- rated is more dangerous to the bank system than AAA, regulators distorted

Sir, Gillian Tett tells us that a central bank official once told her pointing to a Euro note “That’s what’s wrong with Europe… It’s just windows and bridges!”. And she is clear about that “you cannot fight nationalism solely with economic figures — you need faces too” “How to change the face of Europe” May 7.

That, as I had often written to you, goes to the heart of the problem of EU, namely that very few would like to call Europe home, precisely because home is much more about compatriots than infrastructure.

And Gillian Tett writes “These days Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, is providing another unifying force (of sorts). But these are not faces that command popular respect across the continent — or not compared with the heroes of individual nations”

Of course, adorning a Euro note in the future is an honor that should be reserved for nation or union builders, not for destroyers. With time Draghi, Ingves, Caruana, some of the European names among the bank regulators, together with their over the pond colleagues, are going to be held to account for having concocted a destructive invention with what we know as the Basel Committee’s risk weighted capital requirements for banks.

The principle behind these regulations is that a below BB- rated asset, highly-speculative to imminent default rated, which in Basel II was given a 150% risk weight, is much more dangerous to the banking system than an AAA rated prime asset, and which was therefore given only a 20% risk weight.

It was like nannies believing the children to be more in danger when approached by ugly and foul smelling persons, than when approached by nice looking gentlemen who offer them candy.

And based on that sole flimsy principle the regulators shamelessly, not concerned with it at all, went on and completely distorted the allocation of bank credit to the real economy.

Does Gillian Tett also believe in the validity of such principle? And, if not, why does she keep mum on it?

PS. Just as a curiosity, in the weeks before the Euro, I did not write of names, but of bridges… the burning of these.

@PerKurowski ©

Gillian Tett, worry less about grey-hair’s casinos and much more about your young’s bank regulators manipulated ones.

Sir, Gillian Tett, as she should, becomes depressed when she ends up at an Atlantic City casino that “looked more like an electronic opium den for senior citizen.” “The rise of the silver slotter leaves me with a sour taste” October 29.

But, unless there is fraud, each one of those bets at the Atlantic City casino, has exactly the same expected pay out; namely a slight negative value because of the houses wins, like that when a zero comes up on the roulette. The cost of entertainment.

But out there in the other world, in the Main-Street, regulators have told banks that if they play it safe, like on black or read, like on sovereigns, AAA rated, or financing residential houses, they will earn much higher (expected) returns on equity, than if they bet on risky SMEs or entrepreneurs.

If Gillian Tett is concerned about the future of her children and grandchildren, that should depress her much more.

Sir, even though I have seen some few casino players fading away in absolute tragic destitution, I assure you that what the Basel Committee has done to the grey haired future of my, and your children and grand children, leaves me with a much more sour taste than thousands of Atlantic City casinos.

@PerKurowski ©

Is Ms. Gillian Tett now, at long last, beginning to understand what is happening?

Sir, Gillian Tett, writes about “how inefficient central banks’ pump priming has been when it comes to delivering capital to the parts of the economy which need it badly – and which are essential to long term growth”, “US venture capital falls short on love in buying frenzy” May 24. 

Since I am not a PhD, a bank-president or a famed bureaucrat, Gillian Tett might not be reading my letters, but that is precisely what I have been telling her and some of her colleagues for years, namely that capital requirements for banks based on perceived risk hinders banks to deliver credit to the parts of the economy which most needs it and which are essential to long term growth.

Perhaps this might be a reminder for her that, now and again, it is convenient for everyone, including anthropologists, to walk the streets of the real economy, and not only those of Davos and alike.

Gillian Tett does just no get it!

Sir, Gillian Tett writes “Stern sermons and looser rules won’t get banks lending more” October 12. She does, not or wants not to really get it. 

It is simply not just a question of banks lending “more”, or having these as an alternate QE money injection in the economy so to say, but, primarily, to get the banks to lend better, in terms of what the economy most needs. That is known as searching for a more “efficient economic resource allocation”. 

Right now, because of capital requirements (plus now, to make it worse, also liquidity requirements) which are based on ex-ante perceived risks, and made stricter by the big scarcity lack of bank equity, banks tend to lend to “The Infallible” and avoid lending to “The Risky”. The latter include of course the small businesses and entrepreneurs. 

And so, what the British regulators are currently doing, at long last, thank God, with their “quietly loosening bank rules”, is discreetly trying to reduce the regulatory discrimination against “The Risky”. That it is hard for them to be too forthright about it is sort of understandable, because that would signify having to admit how stupidly they behaved earlier.

Frankly, on the face of it, it would seem to me that Gillian Tett could learn much more about banker behaviour from Mark Twain than from Phil Coffey.

Gillian Tett, a functional bank system is a much more powerful instrument of change than a violin, even if Joe’s

Sir, Gillian Tett writes beautifully about “Joe’s violin… an instrument soaked in 20th-century immigrant memories was launching a new 21st-century immigrant dream, forged with struggle, risk and hope”, “An instrument of change” February 24.

But 20th-century immigrants, when needing the opportunity of bank credit, though they of course had to confront that risk aversion described by Mark Twain with “bankers lend you the umbrella when the sun is out and want it back when it looks like it could rain”, they did not have to face risk weighted capital requirements for banks.

So Ms. Tett should reflect on the possibility that had a Joseph Feingold’s livelihood depended on receiving the chance imbedded in a bank credit, in the 21st century, he might have needed to part with the violin bartering it for something more useful, and would never have had the chance to donate it.

Our future is to be “forged with struggle, risk and hope”. Yes indeed Ms Tett, “God make us daring” and save us from loony technocrats.

@PerKurowski

Does Gillian Tett suffer from blind faith in the experts?

Sir, Gillian Tett analyses “The blind faith in wishful thinking” of bankers with respect to those securities baked with mortgages to the subprime sector which collapsed in 2007, March 23. 

But again Tett refuses to refer to what having regulators allowing banks to leverage the expected risk adjusted margins of those AAA rated securities on their equity, a mindboggling 62.5 times to 1, must have done to feed any blind faith. Talk about hype!

The pillar of all Basel bank regulations are the capital requirements based on perceived risk, and which are crazy in that they clear for risks already cleared for. 

Has Tett, as a journalist asked any of the regulators to explain to her the rationale behind those capital requirements, in terms beyond of what that fuzzy “more-risk-more-capital less-risk-less-capital, it sounds logical” provides? 

Is she not curious? Or is it that she herself suffers from blind faith in the experts?