Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Current capital (meaning equity) requirements for banks are unethical, regressive, dangerous, stupid and promote inequality

Allowing banks to hold assets perceived as absolutely safe against much less capital (meaning equity) than against assets perceived as risky, allows banks to earn much higher risk-adjusted returns on bank equity when lending to the “absolutely safe” like the infallible sovereigns and the AAAristocracy, than when lending to the “risky”.

And that effectively hinders the fair access to bank credit of the “risky”… like that of the small businesses and the entrepreneurs.

And that effectively curtails opportunities and promotes inequalities.

And that odious regressive regulatory discrimination of the risky, as if these were not already sufficiently discriminated against, is unethical; and kills opportunities, which leads to ever increasing inequalities.

And that regulatory distortion is extremely dangerous since it impedes the banks to allocate credit efficiently, which means the real economy will, more sooner than later, stall and fall.

And finally it is all so useless and so stupid… because never ever has a major bank crisis resulted from excessive bank exposures to what was perceived as risky; these have all resulted from excessive exposures to what was erroneously perceived as absolutely safe.