November 29, 2013

Why and how are medium and small businesses, entrepreneurs and start ups, and normal citizens, ruled to be a systemic danger to the financial system?

Sir, Gina Chon reports that some senators are questioning how the Financial Stability Oversight Council might rule some non-bank financial institutions to represent a systemic risk to the financial system; and which among other could lead these to face higher capital requirements, “Senators warn over non-banks regulation”, November 29.

And again I must ask, for the umpteenth time, why and how are the medium and small businesses, entrepreneurs and start ups, and normal citizens, ruled to be a systemic danger to the financial system?

And I ask this because all higher capital requirements demanded from any financial institutions, when subjected to risk-weighing, naturally impacts the most those against which businesses the most capital is required, and which is of course those who have a high risk-weight.

Others, like the sovereign and the AAAristocracy, are often even favorably impacted by these higher capital rulings since, as the song goes, when capital gets to be scarce the low risk weighted get going.

Chon comments that “the senator’s criticisms could delay the council’s assessment of asset managers, giving them more time to lobby for the regulation to be watered down”. How sad no senator, in the home of the brave, seems interested in watering down the completely unwarranted and odious discrimination against those though correctly perceived as risky, have precisely because of that, never ever caused a major financial crisis.