Thursday, March 26, 2015

Current credit-risk-weighted capital (equity) requirements for banks, besides being stupid and dangerous, are immoral

This is what the current bank regulators have decreed, on their own, without any real consultations:

The lower the perceived credit risk of an asset, the lower the equity a bank has to have against it… and so of course, the higher the perceived credit risk of an asset, the higher the equity a bank has to have against it.

It is stupid: because never ever have major bank crises resulted from excessive bank exposures to what is perceived as risky, these have always resulted, no exceptions, from excessive bank exposure to something perceived as save.

It is dangerous (even from a national security perspective): because allowing banks to leverage their equity, and the support they receive from taxpayers, differently based on perceived risks, will seriously distort the allocation of bank credit to the real economy and thereby weaken it.

And it is immoral: because having those perceived as risky and who already, precisely because of those perceptions, have less and more expensive access to bank credit, to have even lesser and even more expensive access to bank credit, is an odious and immoral regulatory discrimination, which kills opportunities and increases inequality.