Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Dumb G20 ministers reiterated in Hangzhou their support of the inept Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS)


“We reiterate our support for the work by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) to finalize the Basel III framework by the end of 2016, without further significantly increasing overall capital requirements across the banking sector, while promoting a level playing field”

Clearly the Ministers did not dare to ask the regulators some minimum minimorum questions like:

What do you believe is the purpose of banks? Should it not have something to do with what like John A Shedd opined: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for” 

If the purpose of the banks includes that of allocating credit efficiently to the real economy, why then do you distort that with risk weighted capital requirements for banks?

Can you indicate us one single bank crisis derived from excessive exposures to what was perceived as risky when incorporated to the balance sheets of banks? Voltaire said “May God defend me from my friends. I can defend myself from my enemies”. 

So, could that lack of questioning by the ministers be explained by John Kenneth Galbraith’s “If one is pretending to knowledge one does not have, one cannot ask for explanations to support possible objections”?

Frankly, neither Hollywood nor Bollywood, would insist in supporting the work of someone producing such Basel I-II flop, as the 2007/08 crisis and the thereafter continued stagnation evidences.