Thursday, October 1, 2015

BoE´s Mark Carney should mind his own business, as a bank regulator managing risks he has no right to throw stones.

Mark Carney, the current Chair of the Financial Stability Board, has recently been warning many about the financial risks that could be derived from climate change, like leaving a lot of fossil fuels stranded. He should first take better care of his own risk management responsibilities. In that area he has not earned the right to throw stones.

Regulators allow banks to hold much less capital against what, from a credit risk point of view, is perceived as safe than against what is from a credit point of view ex ante perceived as risky.

That means that banks can earn much higher risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to what is perceived safe, than when lending to those perceived risky, like the SMEs and entrepreneurs.

That is a huge economic risk, because the risky need to have fair access to bank credit in order to help the real economy to avoid to stall and fall.

That is a huge financial risk, because it guarantees excessive exposures against little capital, to precisely that of which great bank crisis are made of, that which ex post can come up as having been erroneously perceived as absolutely safe.