Regulators divided private sector in two, Safe and Risky. And guess who is losing out more than usual? All of us!

Sir, Bill Gross asks: “Why would the private sector… not borrow at practically no cost to invest in a centuries’ old capitalistic model proven to reward risk-taking in the real economy?”, “Central bankers are threatening the engine of the economy”, August 18.

 

In his comments Gross forgets there are now two private sectors. One, perceived, decreed or concocted as “safe”, AAArisktocracy and residential housing, and to whom banks can lend against very little capital; and the one which includes those perceived as risky, SMEs and entrepreneurs, those that regulators require the banks to hold much more capital when lending to.

And so “The Safe”, by allowing banks to leverage more their equity, provides the banks with higher expected risk adjusted return than what “The Risky” can do,

And so regulators decreed that money paid in net risk adjusted margins by “The Safe”, is worth more to banks than that same money when paid by “The Risky.

And so The Risky have been left out in the cold, that is unless they accept to compensate banks for this regulatory discrimination; by paying rates over what their ordinary risk adjustments would justify.

QEs and other fiscal stimuli, or negative interests, finds it hard to overcome this hurdle and reach with bank credit the vital SMEs and entrepreneurs, who might want to borrow, and so most of it gets wasted.

And besides The Risky, we all lose out! It refuses the risk-taking tomorrow’s economy requires be taken by todays’; and all for nothing, because The Risky never cause that type of excessive bank exposures that can cause a major crisis; that dishonor belongs entirely to “The Safe”. 

@PerKurowski ©

In terms of dangerous hubris, Bill Gross is nothing when compared to bank regulators.

Sir, I refer to Gillian Tett’s “Hubris, politics and finance make a toxic mix”, October 4.

She makes many good points and I am sure a Daedalus Trust can play a very important role as a hubris buster…that is as long as it can keep the hubris of its own hubris slayers in check.

But here the center of Ms. Tett’s concerns on excessive hubris is Bill Gross, ex-Pimco, and he is really nothing compared to the hubris that is still rampant among bank regulators. Their mind-boggling hubris caused them to believe they could, with their risk-weighted capital requirements for banks, even act as the risk-managers for the whole banking world.

Ms. Tett reminds us of slaves who walked alongside victorious Roman generals reminding them they were mere mortals. That is exactly the role for a FT, and with its motto FT shows it knows it, but, over the recent years, it has too often instead fed the hubris of some of those most at risk, like for instance "whatever it takes" Mario Draghi… in whom it trusts so so much.

For the last decade I have diligently walked along FT, trying to un-requested perform the role of such a slave. Unfortunately those at FT seem not to be anything like a Roman general wanting to hear the truth.

Mr. Gross was the victim of bank regulatory distortions in favor of the “infallible sovereigns”

Sir, Gillian Tett writes: “After a life of trend spotting, Gross missed the big shift” September 29 and she argues that “Mr. Gross is a potent symbol of a distorted investment world”.

Indeed he is, but again Ms. Tett is not able to identify the main source of the distortion that I believe Gross missed, namely the risk-weighted capital requirements for banks which allow banks to hold debt of the “infallible sovereigns”, against much less capital than what they need to hold against any other asset. 

In November of 2004 FT published a letter in which I wrote “how many Basel propositions will it take before they start realizing the damage they are doing by favoring so much bank lending to the public sector”

Clearly neither Mr. Gross nor Ms. Tett read that letter.