Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I am so disappointed with conservative, progressive and of course middle of the road think-tanks.

The minimum capital requirements for the banks drafted by the Basel Committee and that apply or inspire most bank regulations in the world establishes that if a bank gives a loan to a normal entrepreneur who does not have a credit rating then it needs 8 percent in capital; if the loan is to a client with an AAA rating then 1.6 percent in capital will do and if it is a loan to its government then there is no capital requirement at all.

Dear libertarians/conservatives.

Eight percent in capital when lending to a citizen and zero when lending to the government…does this not upset you?

Is not risk taking what keeps a society moving forward? Is not taxing risks and subsidizing risk adverseness something like having your country lie down and die?

Do you not find it crazy that some few credit rating agencies, even if private, shall have so much to say in orientating the capital markets and messing up the risk allocation systems?

Dear progressives.

Eight percent in capital when lending to an ordinary citizen and 1.6 percent when lending to a company rated AAA… do you agree with such discrimination? Does not the AAAristocracy have enough advantages already?

Don´t you know that AAA ratings in just a couple of years drove more capitals to the US housing market than all the loans given by the World Bank and the IMF ever since they were founded? How come you can applaud silly initiatives like Banco del Sur when obviously a Credit Rating Agency del Sur seems to carry so much punch nowadays?

Low capital requirements just because someone has got an AAA rating and is supposedly risk free… and what about the purpose of the loans should not that count too?

Dear middle of the roaders.

All of the above plus:

Think about it, even if the credit rating agencies had been perfectly right in their assessments what would the country have gained… more mortgages to ever bigger houses?… more financing from abroad in order to keep on buying even more imports?

The way you kids growing up with GPS might never know what north, south, east and west means… do you want your bankers just to follow credit rating agencies opinions and never learn themselves about analyzing a client, looking him in the eyes and shaking his hand?

Do you really want to have your financial sector watched over by regulators so naive and gullible that they did not know that sooner or later the credit rating agencies that they empowered so much would be captured?

No, all of you think tanks!… what´s wrong with you?…. Too lazy to even read the Basel Epistles that governs most of your current financial regulatory system? As a fact, from all of the books articles comments and other ways of expression we see from those selling themselves as experts on the crisis, there is clear evidence that 99 percent of them have not even read an abridged version of what is contained in Basel II.

Or are you all just a bunch of baby-boomers who follow whoever promises most to avoid risks, while you are around, placing your reverse mortgage of the world and shouting “Après nous le deluge”? If so, shame on you all!