Monday, November 24, 2014

Bye bye Europe! Having introduced financial feudalism, Europe has gone back to the Middle Ages.

The AAAristocracy, those who posses or have access to an AAA rating; and the sovereigns, those who have declared themselves to be infallible have, with the witting or unwittingly cooperation of neo-vassal bank regulators, managed to introduce a system that guarantees them, more than ever, preferential access to bank credit.

That has been achieved by means of the portfolio invariant credit risk based capital, meaning equity, requirements for banks. More perceived credit risk - more equity; less risk - less equity. Because that insidious piece of regulation allow banks to earn more risk-adjusted returns on equity when lending to the AAAristocracy or when lending to the “infallible sovereign”, than when lending to the “risky”, like to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

And, as anyone should be able to understand, the more you subsidize the access to bank credit for some, in this case through regulations, the harder it is for those excluded to compete for it.

In short, a sort of financial feudalism has taken over Europe. 

And since that impedes fair access to bank credit, the land, to those Europe most needs to have it, its peasants, there is but one way it can go... and that is down down down.

And clearly this odious discrimination against the opportunities of the peasants, can only increase the inequalities in the society. 

But of course it will all come to an end, when the banks fail because of lending too much at too low rates, to a not so infallible sovereigns or to a false AAAristocrat... since that is why banks have always failed. Never ever have they failed by lending too much to peasants.

PS. It is not only Europe that is affected. The Basel Committee is spreading financial feudalism around the world... now even in America, "the land of the free", they have AAAristocrats... more precise yet AAArisktocrats