Don’t ever take members of the Basel Committee with you to the races. They’re dangerous!
I went to the races with some members of the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision.
They were so afraid I would lose money and blame any bad luck on them, so they offered to pay twice the odds, if I only bet on favorite horses paying less than 2 to 1.
And I started making profits like a bandit, even paid the bookies big bonuses, and logically I increased and increased my bets on safe favorites more and more… that is until a favorite turned out to be a real dud, and I lost all I had.
If I had only gone on my own that would never have happened.
These lunatics should be hauled in front of courts for illegally manipulating the odds. Of course they can always argue they had no idea about what they were doing.
As handicap officials on the racetrack the bank regulators would be taking off weights from the stronger horses and placing these on the weaker.
Note: When the Basel Committee allows banks to leverage more on assets perceived as safe, than on assets perceived as risky, they are in effect manipulating the odds of the risk adjusted returns on the banks equity, and thereby distorting the credit markets.
PS. With all horses carrying the same weight, the pay-out on betting Rich Strike winning the 148th Kentucky Derby was 80-1. If a Basel Committee for Horse-racing Supervision had ruled, it would have ordered the Kentucky Derby to be a handicap race. And with such a “betting risk” odds, Rich Strike would have been carrying so much extra-weight, it could easily have come in last in the race.
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