Sunday, January 8, 2017

Economist Andrew Haldane. At least when acting as a bank regulator, you are admitting the wrong error you committed

Chief economist of Bank of England Andrew Haldane says “his profession must adapt to regain the trust of the public, claiming narrow models ignored ‘irrational behaviour’” “Chief economist of Bank of England admits errors in Brexit forecasting” The Guardian, January 5, 2017.

Hold it Mr Haldane! What you and other economists ignored. when acting as regulators, was that banks would, as always, behave perfectly rational, and lend to what they expected would yield them the highest risk adjusted returns on equity.

That is what you failed to understand when allowing banks to hold less capital against what was perceived, decreed or concocted as safe. That meant banks could leverage more, and so earn higher expected risk adjusted returns on equity, when lending to the “safe”. 

That distortion in the allocation of bank credit to the real economy, resulted in that banks end up lending too much at too low interest rates to the “safe”… which could be risky for the banks; and to little and too expensive to “risky” SMEs and entrepreneurs which is very dangerous for the economy.