We need to fire the self appointed supreme risk manager of the world!

When the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision decreed capital requirements for banks that resulted from assigning risk-weights based on the risk of default, as perceived by the credit rating agencies… with incredible hubris they took upon themselves to act in the role of supreme risk manager of the world.

How have they been doing? Worse than lousy! Basel II failed monumentally only 3 years after its approval in June 2004.

As an Executive Director in the World Bank, 2002-2004, and in many published articles since 1997, I protested loudly the regulatory paradigm that the Basel Committee is built upon, and I warned precisely about those risks that caused the current crisis.

With whatever credibility that should give me I guarantee you that the Basel Committee, with their Basel III, is only digging us and our banks further down into the hole where they placed us.

The role of a bank regulator is not to guard us against those risks of default perceived by credit rating agencies, and which are therefore also perceived by the markets and by the banks. No bank crisis has ever resulted from excessive lending or investments in what is perceived as risky… they have all resulted from excessive lending or investment in what was ex-ante perceived as not risky. Therefore the fundamental role of a bank regulator is to take precautions against those risks that might not have been perceived.

The role of a bank regulator, more than guard us against bank failures, is to guard us against the risk that the banks and whom the tax payers lend so much support to, do not serve their purpose for the society… and the Basel Committee has not yet said even one single word about what the purpose of the banks should be.

Let absolutely no one regulate before they do state the full purpose of the entities they are regulating… and that “purpose” has of course been deemed acceptable to us.