Stefan Ingves, years after Basel Committee’s failure, you all have still no idea about how to regulate banks.

On December 2, 2016 Stefan Ingves, the Chairman of the Basel Committee gave a Keynote speech at the second Conference on Banking Development, Stability and Sustainability, titled “Finalising Basel III: Coherence, calibration and complexity” 

In it Ingves stated: “an area of further research which would be welcome relates to how we should think about the capital benefits of allowing banks to use internally modelled approaches, and therefore the appropriate calibration of capital floors to such models. What are the pre-conditions for such models to produce better outcomes than, say, simpler standardised approaches? And to whom do the benefits of improved modelling accrue? If a bank using a model can lower its capital requirements by, say, 30%, what are the financial stability and real economy benefits of such an approach? To what extent do the benefits of modelling accrue to lower-risk borrowers as opposed to the parties being compensated for developing and using the models?”

That is clear evidence that the Basel Committee still, soon ten years after the crisis, their failure, has no idea about what it is doing. It should concern us all. 

Here’s one example on of how the Basel Committee’s has totally confused ex ante risks with ex post risks. In their Basel II standardized risk weights the weight assigned to AAA assets is 20% while the weight of a highly speculative below BB- rated assets was set at 150%. 

I ask: What has much greater chance of taking the banking system down, excessive exposures to something ex ante believed very safe or excessive exposures to something believed very risky? The answer should be clear. Never ever have bank crises resulted from excessive exposures to something believe risky when placed on the balance sheet; these have always resulted from unexpected events (like devaluations), criminal behavior or excessive exposures to something perceived ex ante as very safe but that ex post turned out to be very risky. 

The truth is that the Basel Committee told banks: “Go out and leverage your capital more than with assets that are safe”. And so when disaster happens, like with AAA rated securities, banks stand there more naked than ever.

Of course, the other side of that coin is, “Do not go and lend to what is risky”. So banks dangerously for the real economy stopped lending to SMEs and entrepreneurs… something that is never considered when stress testing.

To top it up, like vulgar statist activists, they set a risk weight of 0% for the Sovereign and one of 100% for We the People; which translates into a belief that government bureaucrats can use bank credit more efficiently than the private sector… something which of course created the excessive indebtedness of Greece and other.

One final comment, the regulators naivety is boundless: “to whom do the benefits of improved modeling accrue? asks Ingves” Clearly there is no understanding of that bankers will, as is almost their duty, always look to minimize capital if so allowed, in order to obtain the highest expected risk adjusted returns on equity. 

When fake regulators supervise banks; totally unsupervised banks is much better.

PS. Must one go on a hunger strike to have the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision answer some very basic questions?