Banks and regulators don’t care about our economy

Banks, regulators and risk

The Aug. 5 Economy & Business article “What happens when lines blur between banks, regulators” referred to several issues and conflicts of importance between banks and regulators but did not mention the prime point of agreement between all regulators and all banks: None of these actors cares about the state of the real economy.

Banks love to earn high-risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to something perceived as absolutely safe, so they love when regulators allow them to hold much less equity when lending to something perceived, decreed or concocted as safe.

Regulators love it when banks avoid taking risks, so they are more than happy to allow banks to hold much less equity when lending to something ex-ante perceived by them as safe, and therefore allow banks to earn much higher risk-adjusted returns on equity when staying away from the risky.

Our problem, though, is that we need for our banks to lend to the risky, such as small and medium-size enterprises and entrepreneurs, to keep our economy moving forward.

Regulators have never defined the purpose of the banks, so they do not care about whether these banks allocate credit efficiently to our real economy.

Per Kurowski, Rockville

The writer was an executive director at the World Bank from 2002 to 2004.

A letter in the Washington Post

My letters in the Washington Post on bank regulations:
September 6, 2007: Factors in the Financial Storm
June 20, 2008: An Aspect of the Bubble
December 27, 2009: Another 'worst': Faulty bank regulation
January 6, 2012: Handcuffed by a triple-A rating
May 1, 2013: An American approach to banking
December 23, 2014: Let the market rule on risky trades
November 11, 2015: Reverse-mortgaging the future
August 9, 2016: Banks, regulators and risk
April 16, 2017: When banks play it too safe
July 11, 2018: There is another tariff war that is being dangerously ignored.
December 30, 2018: Affordable homes or investment assets?
April 19, 2020: The capacity to borrow is a valuable sovereign asset.
November 28, 2022: Before the debt ceiling is lifted
August 22, 2023: The economic revolution