What would have happened if, since Basel I, 1988, there had just been one 8% bank capital requirement for all assets?

The “safe” sovereigns would not have seen their borrowings subsidized by the “risky” SMEs and entrepreneurs lesser access to bank credit. 

Sovereigns like Greece would never have been able to run up such large debts on such low initial interest rates.

House financing would not have been so much available at artificial low rates so house prices would be lower.

Much more financing would have gone to those “risky” SMEs and entrepreneurs who could create the jobs the house owners need in order to repay mortgages and service utilities, and that so many young need in order not having to live in the basements of their parents’ houses.

Some other crisis could have resulted, but the catastrophic sized one with the AAA rated securities collateralized with mortgages to the subprime sector, would never have happened.

Central banks would not have needed to kick the crisis can down the road with trillions of QEs… that are still out there on the road menacing to run back on us.

Central banks would not have needed to kick the crisis can down the road with ultra low interest rates that are creating havoc on all pension plans.

The world would not have served up the table with so much for the populists to munch on.

The saddest part though is that now, ten years after those assets that caused the big crisis correlated completely with those assets that required banks to hold the least capital, regulators still apply risk weighted capital requirements. I guess, as Upton Sinclair Jr. said, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”