November 09, 2016

It is time for America to ask bank regulation’s risk weights of 0% Sovereign and 100% We the People, to take a hike!

Sir, Martin Wolf, in reference to the United States writes: “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man rules… the next administration will take over a country with mediocre growth of productivity, high inequality, a growing retreat from work and a declining rate of creation of new businesses and jobs… loss of dynamism… business fixed investment has been persistently weak… rise of new regulatory barriers is disturbing.” “An economic in-tray full of problems” November 9.

Of course, as usual, obsessively, Wolf says not a word about the possibility that the risk weights of 0% sovereign, 20% AAA rated, 35% residential housing and 100% SMEs, set for the purpose of defining the capital requirements for banks, are distorting the allocation of bank credit to the real economy, with disastrous consequences.

At least last week, during IMF’s Annual Research Conference, at the very end of the conference, none other than Olivier Blanchard, the former Chief Economist of the IMF, admitted that: indeed more research was needed to better understand the underlying factors for the trend to lower public debt interests that can be observed the last 30 years; and that this trend might very well be explained to a certain extent by current bank regulations.

When the truth about the risk weighted capital requirements for banks unravel, I wonder how Mr. Wolf is going to explain his and FT’s silence on my thousands of letters.

By the way, after yesterdays American election results, is it not high time for the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave to ask those risk weights of 0% Sovereign and 100% We the People, to take a hike?

PS. What caused the unexpected election results? I really don’t know, I am not American so I did not have to vote (phew what a relief) but the irritating smugness of technocrat and media besserwissers, sure must have played an important role.

PS. I forgot, fairly recent I twitted: “As I see it there's one vote for the next 4 years, and then there’s one for the next 40. The latter could be for Gary Johnson”

@PerKurowski