September 26, 2012

What’s wrong with variation in banks’ risk estimates?

Sir, Brooke Masters reports on a “Wide variation in banks’ risk estimates” September 26 and I cannot but ask… what’s wrong with that? 

Is the one single standard risk estimate applied by petit bank regulatory bureaucrats supposed to be better? Like their 0% for UK, 20% for Greece and 100% for a small business? 

Markets are not about consistent risk estimates, they are all about different risk estimates. And so, NO! Set one single capital requirement for all bank assets, and then allow the banks, and the markets to do their own very varied risk calculations.