Saturday, May 7, 2016

Why was the most important obstacle for small businesses accessing bank credit not even mentioned in 2012 JOBS Act?

Bank regulators consider small unrated businesses to be much more dangerous to the banking system and to financial stability, than well-rated corporations.

That is an extremely flimsy and wrong proposition, based on absolutely nothing! 

And that is why, with Basel II, for the purpose of defining the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, regulators assigned a risk weight of 100 percent for the small unrated businesses and one of only 20 for AAA to AA rated corporations.

And that translated into banks being allowed to hold much less capital against “the safe” assets than against “the risky assets; which meant banks could leverage more their equity lending to the safe than lending to the risky; which meant banks earn higher expected risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to the safe than when lending to the risky.

And that represents the most significant cause for small-unrated businesses not having fair access to bank credit.

And not a single word about that obstacle, and the need to remove it, was mentioned in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012

And amazingly, the issue of the distortions in the allocation of bank credit to the real economy that credit risk aversion causes in the Home of the Brave, is still not even being discussed.