What I as a former Executive Director of the World Bank pray that any new President of it understands
I was an Executive Director at the World Bank from November 2002 until October 2004. During that time the Basel Committee's Basel II bank regulations were being discussed. It was approved in June 2004.
I was against the basic principles of those regulations that had begun with the Basel Accord of 1988, Basel I. That should be clear from Op-Eds I had published earlier, transcripts of my statements at the WB Board, and in the letters that I wrote and FT published during that time. Here is a brief summary of all that
Since then I haven't changed my mind... the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, which are a pillar of those bank regulations, is almost unimaginable bad.
I pray the next president of the world’s premier development bank, whoever he is, and wherever he comes from, at least, as a minimum minimorum, understands:
First, that risk-taking is the oxygen of any development, and therefore the regulators’ risk adverse risk weighted capital requirements, will distort against banks taking the risks that help to push our economies forward. “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.”, John A Shedd.
Second, that what’s perceived as risky is much less dangerous to our bank systems than what’s perceived as safe, and so that these regulations doom us to especially large bank crises, because of especially large exposures to what is especially perceived (or decreed) as safe, against especially little capital.
Do you not agree that mine is a quite reasonable wish?
@PerKurowski
Posts
