And the Academia kept silence.

Note: The Basel Committee’s use of the term “capital” in “risk weighted bank capital requirements” has sowed loads of confusions. Its real significance is “risk weighted bank shareholders’ equity/skin-in-the-game requirements". It has nothing to do with in what bank assets it’s invested.

Note: With the appearance ChatGPT – OpenAI, Academia will be asked much more on the why of its almost total silence on the outright dangerous bank regulations. Just wait until their peer reviewed papers get reviewed by #AI.

https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2023/06/my-questions-to-chatgpt-openai-about.html

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for”. John A. Shedd, 1928. Does that not apply for banks too?

For about 600 years banks allocated credit based on risk adjusted interest rates. After risk weighted capital requirements were introduced, they allocate it based on risk adjusted returns on regulatory equity (RORE). Huge distortions ensued! 

And the Academia kept silence.

The risk weighted bank capital requirements are based on perceived credit risks and not on risks conditioned to how bankers react to perceived risks. Clearly the regulators know nothing about conditional probabilities.

And the Academia kept silence.

To delegate so much of the determination of credit risk into the hands of some few human fallible credit rating agencies, had, almost by definition, to introduce into our banking systems, a dangerous systemic risk.
And the Academia kept silence.

Lower bank capital requirements when lending to the government than when lending to citizens, de facto implies bureaucrats know better what to do with credit they’re not personally responsible for than e.g. entrepreneurs

And the Academia kept silence.

Lower bank capital requirements for banks when financing the central government than when financing local governments, de facto implies federal bureaucrats know much better what to do with credit than local bureaucrats.

And the Academia kept silence.

Lower bank capital requirements for banks when financing residential mortgages, de facto implies that those buying a house are more important for the economy than, e.g. small businesses and entrepreneurs.

And the Academia kept silence.

Lower bank capital requirements for banks when financing the “safer” present than when financing the “riskier” future, de facto implies placing a reverse mortgage on the current economy and giving up on our grandchildren’s future.

And the Academia kept silence.

When outlook is rosy, investment grade abounds, banks can: hold little capital, leverage a lot, obtain high returns on equity, buy back lots of shares, pay lots of dividends and huge bonuses. When rain starts, junk grades appear… banks will stand naked.
And the Academia kept silence.

And all for nothing. Those excessive bank exposures that could be dangerous to our bank systems are always built-up with assets perceived or decreed as safe, and never ever with assets perceived as risky.

And the Academia kept silence.

Could it be that? “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” George Orwell

The statist confession that shall not be heard

“Assets for which capital requirements were nonexistent, were what had most political support: sovereign credits. A simple ‘leverage ratio’ discouraged holdings of low-return government securities" Paul Volcker

And in the USA those risk weighted bank capital requirements seem to be unconstitutional

On the Nobel Prize: The Economic Sciences Prize Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selects the Nobel prize winner in economic sciences. That prize was established by Sveriges Riksbank in 1968. The current Governor of said central bank, is Stefan Ingves who, from 2011 until 2019, served as the Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Could anyone arguing that what’s perceived as safe is much more dangerous to our bank system (heliocentric) than what’s perceived as risky (geocentric), be nominated for that prize by such a (Inquisition) committee? 

https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2020/12/how-come-we-ended-up-with-stupid.html

Since we know all about risks, to make your banks safe, we regulators, we the Basel Committee, we give you our risk weighted bank capital requirements. And the Academia (desperately wanting to be counted among the Pigs on Orwell’s farm) kept silence.

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2023/05/has-orwells-big-brother-already.html

Five sad musings on the current bank regulations autocratically dictated by central bankers.

It is so hard for me to muster enough interest about central bankers’ monetary policies, while they make these so ineffective by imposing regulations that dangerously distort the allocation of bank credit.

“Credit risk weighted bank capital (equity) requirements” 

translates as 

“Worthy of credit allowed bank capital (equity) leverages”

Their lower bank capital requirements when lending to the government than when lending to citizens, de facto implies bureaucrats know better what to do with credit they’re not personally responsible for than e.g. entrepreneurs... and so are more worthy of it.

Their lower bank capital requirements for banks when financing the central government than when financing local governments, de facto implies federal bureaucrats know much better what to do with credit than local bureaucrats... and so are more worthy of it.

Their lower bank capital requirements for banks when financing residential mortgages, de facto implies that those buying a house are more important for the economy than, e.g. small businesses and entrepreneurs... and so are more worthy of it.

Their lower bank capital requirements for banks when financing the “safer” present than when financing the “riskier” future, de facto implies placing a reverse mortgage on the current economy and giving up on our grandchildren’s future.

And all that for nothing. Those excessive bank exposures that could be dangerous to our bank systems are always built-up with assets perceived or decreed as safe, and never ever with assets perceived as risky.

It’s despairing to see a Federal Reserve not understanding how these bank shareholders’ capital (equity) requirements distort the interest rates e.g., the risk-free rate.

Is all this in accordance to the U.S. Constitution? 

https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2019/07/risk-weights-are-to-access-to-credit.html

Might “availability heuristic” “availability bias” explain the loony risk weighted bank capital requirements?

According to Wikipedia:

"The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.

The availability of consequences associated with an action is positively related to perceptions of the magnitude of the consequences of that action. In other words, the easier it is to recall the consequences of something, the greater those consequences are often perceived to be. Most notably, people often rely on the content of their recall if its implications are not called into question by the difficulty that they experience in bringing the relevant material to mind"

Could that explain why the world, so submissively, has accepted the regulators' bank capital requirements based on that those excessive exposures that could be dangerous to bank systems are built-up with assets perceived risky, and not with assets perceived as safe? 

Has the immediate example of the certainty of Monday Morning Quarterbacks, informing them about the awful consequences of what was very risky after the game, totally blocked regulators from even looking at what was considered as very safe before the game?

Richard Thaler
Cass Sunstein
Daniel Kahneman

PS. Here are other explanations