The 0% risk weighting of sovereigns and 100% of citizens, decreed fiscal irresponsibility.

Sir, Martin Wolf, discussing Trump’s tax cuts writes that America’s longterm fiscal position [has become] fragile”, “Trump’s boom will prove to be hot air” July 10.

Fragile indeed. In 1988 when the Basel Accord assigned America’s public debt a 0% risk weight, its debt was about $2.6 trillion, now it owes around $22 trillion and still has a 0% risk weight. 

Wolf opines “it is not too soon to note where the US is heading. It is hard to imagine anybody standing up for fiscal prudence. The choice is rather between rightwing and leftwing Keynesians. In the long run, that is likely to end badly.”

I fully agree but I must add that the risk weighted bank capital requirements, which so much favors credit to the sovereign over for instance credit to entrepreneurs, created such distortions that made it impossible for markets to send out their timely warning signals.

One can argues as much as one like that the credit risk of the sovereign is much less risky than that of an entrepreneur, but, the other side of the coin of that risk weighting, is that it de facto also implies a belief in that government bureaucrats know better what to do with bank credit they’re not personally liable for, than entrepreneurs.

For instance, does Wolf believe the current fiscal sustainability outlook of for the eurozone sovereigns would be the same if there had been just one single capital requirements for all their bank assets? Would he think French and German banks would still have lent to Greece/Italy as much and at the interest rates they did?

Does Wolf not think the immense stimuli injected by central banks in response to the 2008 crisis, would have been much more productive without the distortions in the allocation of bank credit produced by the credit risk weighing?

Sir, Trump’s tax cuts might not be helpful but, in the great scheme of things Trump is, at least for the time being, a really minor player when it comes to be apportioned blame for fiscal fragility. For instance how is the US be able to get out of that 0% risk weight corner its regulators has painted it into?

Sir, In November 2004 you published a letter in which I wrote: “How many Basel propositions will it take before regulators start realizing the damage they are doing by favoring so much bank lending to the public sector. In some developing countries, access to credit for the private sector is all but gone, and the banks are up to the hilt in public credits.”

@PerKurowski