Two questions to America’s economists, and one for its lawyers.

Bear with me.

Let me start with two passages from John Kenneth Galbraith’s “Money: Whence it came where it went” 1975.

First: “For the new parts of the country [USA’s West] … there was the right to create banks at will and therewith the notes and deposits that resulted from their loans…[if] the bank failed…someone was left holding the worthless notes… but some borrowers from this bank were now in business... [jobs created]

It was an arrangement which reputable bankers and merchants in the East viewed with extreme distaste… Men of economic wisdom, then as later expressing the views of the reputable business community, spoke of the anarchy of unstable banking… The men of wisdom missed the point. The anarchy served the frontier far better than a more orderly system that kept a tight hand on credit would have done…. what is called sound economics is very often what mirrors the needs of the respectfully affluent.”

Second: “The function of credit in a simple society is, in fact, remarkably egalitarian. It allows the man with energy and no money to participate in the economy more or less on a par with the man who has capital of his own. And the more casual the conditions under which credit is granted and hence the more impecunious those accommodated, the more egalitarian credit is… Bad banks, unlike good, loaned to the poor risk, which is another name for the poor man.”

Then, in Steven Solomon's “The Confidence Game” we read:

“On September 2, 1986, the fine cutlery was laid once again at the Bank of England governor’s official residence at New Change… The occasion was an impromptu visit from Paul Volcker… When the Fed chairman sat down with Governor Robin Leigh-Pemberton and three senior BoE officials, the topic he raised was bank capital…” 

Finally in his autobiography “Keeping at it” of 2018, penned together with Christine Harper, Paul Volcker wrote:

“The assets assigned the lowest risk, for which capital requirements were therefore low or nonexistent, were those that had the most political support: sovereign credits and home mortgages. Ironically, losses on those two types of assets would fuel the global crisis in 2008 and a subsequent European crisis in 2011. The American “overall leverage” approach had a disadvantage as well in the eyes of shareholders and executives focused on return on capital; it seemed to discourage holdings of the safest assets, in particular low-return US government securities."

Thanks!

So, now let me ask America’s economists two questions:

If since its Founding Fathers’ days America’s banks had been regulated so as to finance much more the government and residential mortgages than loans to its small businesses and entrepreneurs, would America be where it is now? 

Knowing that all those excessive bank exposures that have set on major bank crises were always built-up with what was ex ante perceived as very safe, what true precautionary purpose do these regulations serve?

And one question to America’s lawyers:

The risk weighted bank capital requirements with decreed weights of 0% Federal Government 100% - We the People, do they really conform with what 's wanted in the U.S. Constitution?

Where do I come from? 

At the World Bank “Let us not forget that the other side of the Basel [Committee’s regulatory risk weighted capital requirements] coin might be many, many developing opportunities in credit foregone”

As one of the Christian Western World? God make us daring!

As one having a strong opinion? My letter to the Financial Stability Board.

25 years on the issue. My first Op-Ed ever, began with what this post does.

Regulatory risk-weights: The sovereign = Zero percent and We the (risky) People = 100%. In America?

I am not an American, and I am not well versed on its Constitution,  but there's one issue which has for a long time been a mystery to me. 

How on earth could America, in 1988, as a signatory of the Basel Accord, accept that for the purpose of setting capital requirements for banks, the risk-weight for the sovereign, meaning the government, was going to be zero percent, while the risk-weight for the citizen, meaning We The People was set at 100%; and all without a major discussion?

I know that “sovereigns” currently means the government but, from reading for instance Randy E. Barnett’s “Our Republican Constitution”, one could have expected some debate about something that is akin to risk weighing the King with an "infallible" 0%, and his subservients with a "risky" 100%.

Barnett's book states that Justice James Wilson, in the Chisholm v. Georgia case of 1793, opined that “To the Constitution of the United States the term Sovereign is totally unknown…and if the term sovereign is to be used at all, it should refer to the individual people”. And the book also frequently refers to the importance of the required consent of the people, which of course is also a thorny issue. 

And, since those risk-weights effectively permit banks to leverage their equity much more when lending to the sovereign, than when lending to the citizen; banks will earn higher risk adjusted returns when lending to the sovereign than when lending to the citizens; and so banks will de facto, sooner or later, lend much too much to the sovereign and much too little to the citizens… and I can simply not fathom how citizens, be they individual or majority, could give their consent to something like that.

De-facto those risk weights signify that regulators believe that government bureaucrats can make better use of bank credit than citizens… it is statism running amok.

But it became even worse. In 2004, in Basel II, regulators also made a distinction between those private who had great credit ratings, like AAA to AA, and who received a 20% risk-weight, and for instance those who had no ratings, and who kept their 100% risk weight. That to creates a sort of AAA-risktocracy that does not square well with the Constitution’s “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.

But even without entering into constitutional issues, there is even a current law that seems to prohibit this type of discrimination, but that is not applied to bank regulations. And I refer to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act: “Regulation B”.

So in the land in which its Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”, I just must ask: How could regulators dare to decree such regulatory inequality?

And to top it up, the current risk-weighted capital requirements for banks, more ex ante perceived risk more capital – less risk less capital, are arbitrary and irrational. And that because no major bank crises have ever result from the build up of excessive dangerous bank exposures to something perceived as risky, that has always happened with something, erroneously, perceived as very safe. If you want to understand how really crazy these bank regulations are, here is a brief memo.

And frankly what would a Governor answer to this question: Why can our banks leverage their equity lending more to a foreign sovereign or a foreigner with a high credit rating, than when lending to us, the local SMEs and entrepreneurs?

No! America would never have become what it is, had it had this type of risk averse discriminatory bank regulations before.

And by the way the Dodd Frank Act, in all its 848 pages, surrealistically, does not mention the Basel Committee nor the Basel Accord, not even once.

Have the risk weights used in current bank regulations really been approved by the US Congress, in accordance to the Constitution?

PS. In his book Professor Barnett defends Federalism from the perspective of making diversity more possible. That rhymes well with what I stated at the World Bank as an Executive Director 2002-04: "A mixture of thousand solutions, many of them inadequate, may lead to a flexible world that can bend with the storms. A world obsessed with Best Practices may calcify its structure and break with any small wind”

America "The Home of the Brave" is going down, because of bank regulators' silly/sissy credit risk aversion.

Banks use to decide whom to lend to, based on who offered them the highest risk adjusted interest rates. 

Not any more. Now banks have to calculate what those risk adjusted interest rates signify in terms of risk-adjusted rates of return on their equity. That is because with their risk weighted capital requirements, regulators now allow banks to hold less capital, and therefore be able to leverage more their equity, when engaging with The Safe than with The Risky.

And those perceived, decreed or concocted as belonging to The Safe, include sovereigns (governments), members of the AAArisktocracy and the financing of houses.

And those belonging to The Risky are SMEs, entrepreneurs, the unrated or the not-so good rated, and citizens in general.

And that of course has introduced a regulatory risk aversion that distorts the allocation of credit to the real economy. By guaranteeing “The Risky” will now have too little access to credit, that dooms the economy and the banks to slowly fade away.

But the banks and the economy could also disappear with a Big Bang. That because by giving banks incentives to go too much for The Safe, sooner or later, some safe havens will be dangerously overpopulated, and we will all suddenly find ourselves there gasping for oxygen.

In essence, because of this regulation, banks no longer finance the riskier future; they just refinance the (for the time being) safer past.

How did this happen? There are many explanations but the most important one is that regulators never defined the purpose of the banks before regulating these.

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.” John A Shedd, 1850-1926

PS. That also goes for the rest of the world. For instance the Eurozone was done in with it.

PS. Should this not be an issue for Homeland Security?

PS. Is that regulatory discrimination legally allowed?

PS. Risk-taking is the oxygen of all development

God make us daring!

Here is a fuller explanation of why the Basel Committee's bank regulators are idiots... or something much worse! 

How come American citizens did not protest the Basel Accord’s 1988 in your face statism?

I refer to:

Confidential Memorandum:

Attack of American Free Enterprise System

Date: August 23, 1971

To: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

From: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

It mentions "The Ideological War Against Western Society"

But I sure have a question for you all

In 1988, by means of the Basel Accord, Basel I, for the purpose of setting the risk weights applicable to the credit risk weighted capital requirements for banks, the regulators defined a zero percent risk weight for the OECD sovereigns (governments) and a 100 percent risk weight for the citizen (the private sector)

That meant that governments would have more favorable access to bank credit than the citizens; which de facto implied that government bureaucrats use bank credit more efficiently than citizens.

There were protests from other sovereigns who also wanted to be awarded a zero percent risk weight… but how come no American citizens protested this in your face statist regulation?

Is not the strength of a sovereign solely the reflection of the strength of its citizens?

That distortion subsidizes government debt; with the subsidy paid for all those in the private sector who as a consequence will, in relative terms, have less and more expensive access to bank credit?

Is this of no interest to America?

If so then America is not what I had learned to believe and admire.

Stop the risk aversion and pro-government bias of bank regulations. Deceitfully it plunders our young's future.

A friend told me I had to read Mark R. Levin´s “Plunder and Deceit”, and when I saw it was subtitled “Big governments exploitation of young people and the future” I immediately ordered a copy. 

And in its first chapter I read about the intergenerational continuum of the past, the living and the unborn… and I knew the author and I, at least in this respect, shared very similar concerns.

And just looking through the index, I knew I had to add a chapter to this book titled: “God make us daring!”

Why? Because the most important driving force on the intergenerational continuum is the willingness of those of us here now, to take the risks needed today in order for the tomorrows of our descendants to be brighter and brighter.

But, unfortunately, tragically, our most important societal financiers of risk-taking, the banks, have been instructed not to attend to the credit needs of The Risky, but to keep financing solely The Safe. How come? 

Regulators imposed capital requirements on banks that are much higher for what is perceived a risky, from a credit risk point of view, than for what is perceived as safe. That allows banks to leverage their equity and the support these receive from the society much more when lending to The Safe than when lending to The Risky. And that of course allows banks to earn much higher risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to The Safe, than when lending to The Risky.

And so regulators have impeded the fair access to bank credit of those perceived as risky, like SMEs and entrepreneurs, and therefore banks are no longer helping out financing the future of our young people, they are only refinancing the past.

And, to top it up, with that so amazingly unnoticed historical event of the Basel Accord of 1988, regulators decided the risk-weight for sovereigns was zero percent, while the risk-weight of citizen 100 percent. And with that these statist/communists de facto made our banks to operate under the assumption that government bureaucrats use bank credit more efficiently than the private sector.

And the credit-risk-aversion and pro-government bias introduced in our bank regulations, has our western civilization going down and down

In April 2013 the Washington Post published the following letter I wrote:

“It suffices to remember the saying about “a banker being that chap who lends you the umbrella when the sun shines but wants it back as soon as it looks like it is going to rain” to know that those assets perceived as safe are already much favored over those perceived as risky. The risk weights applied by the Basel regulations and based on exactly those same perceived risks only increase the gap between “The Infallible” and “The Risky.” 

And that is why I very much salute the bill by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and David Vitter (R-La.) that looks to “require more capital and better capital but also limit the ‘risk-weighting’ of assets.” More capital is a perfectly legitimate requirement, but the imposition of risk weights is fundamentally incompatible with “a land of the brave.” The United States did not become what it is by avoiding risks.”

Unfortunately, in the Home of the Brave, the interests of bankers making their dreams of very high returns with very little risks come true, seems to trump the needs of its younger. 

America: Why do you saddle your young and brightest with huge education loans, if you’re not willing to allow banks financing those who might generate the jobs your young need in order to service that debt?

US Congressmen and Governors: How come you allow your banks to hold less capital when financing sovereigns and members of the AAArisktocracy, than when financing your own small unrated local businesses?

US bank regulators: Have you never heard of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Regulation B)?

A verse of a Swedish Psalm 288 reads: 

“God, from your house, our refuge, you call us 

out to a world where many risks await us.
As one with your world, you want us to live.
God make us daring!”

PS. And all this risk adverse and pro-sovereign regulations for nothing! Major bank crisis do not result from excessive exposures to what was perceived as risky, these always result, no exceptions, from excessive exposures to what was erroneously perceived as very safe. Just look at the AAA rated securities backed with mortgages to the subprime sector... and Greece.

With their regulatory repression of banks, the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board are slaying our economies.

“Banks if you lend to a risky small business or an entrepreneur (broccoli) we will force you to hold more equity (spinach) but, if you lend to our dear safe mother government (ice-cream), we will reward you by allowing you to hold much less equity (chocolate-cake).”

The economies of Europe, of the whole Western world, are unwittingly being submitted to euthanasia by bank regulators too dumb (hopefully) to understand what they are doing.

Our economies, dieting solely on carbs, are being immobilized by growing obesity (as evidenced for instance by  negative interest rates) and any of these days they will suffer a heart-attack.

I have a very specific question for President Obama on his State of the Unions address.

President Obama in his State of the Union Address — Remarks As Prepared for Delivery states:

“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”

And which makes me ask: Are we supposed to keep bank regulations who so much favors the infallible sovereigns’ and the AAArisktocracy’ access to bank credit, when compared to that of the “risky” small businesses’ and entrepreneurs’?

To me it is amazing to see how much regulatory aversion against “the risky” exists in the home of the brave.

http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2010/04/please-explain.html

http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2013/11/have-risk-weights-of-current-bank.html

http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2012/07/complaint-i-presented-to-consumer.html

Is America, the land of the brave living within the land of the sissy, or vice-versa?

I just finished seeing Zero Dark Thirty, which refers to all that US risk-taking needed in order to kill Osama Bin Laden, something quite compatible with the “land of the brave”. 

But then I compare that to all that sissy and dumb risk-aversion implicit in bank regulations which pay banks extra returns on equity, for lending to “The Infallible”, no matter how useless, and not when lending to “The Risky”, no matter how important, and I wonder how all that can coexist within one same country. There just has to be some immense disconnect. 

Is America, USA, the land of the brave living within the land of the sissy, or vice-versa?

Our bank regulators, unwittingly, committed an act of high treason

There can hardly be a more insidious way to destroy a nation than to make its banking system more risk averse than what it normally is. 

And that our current bank regulators did, unwittingly, with Basel II, when they allowed the banks to hold so much less capital when lending to “The Infallible” than when lending to “The Risky”… and therefore to be able to earn so much more return on their equity when lending to “The Infallible” than when lending to “The Risky”… and therefore also to be able to pay the bankers so much higher bonuses when lending to “The Infallible” than when lending to “The Risky”. Doing so the regulators effectively "bribed" the banks to lend only to “The Infallible” and to abandon all bank lending to “The Risky”.

And that, of course, caused the bank exposures to “The Infallible”, those ex-ante perceived as absolutely not risky, precisely those to whom excessive lending has always caused all major bank crisis when they, ex-post, turn out to be “The Risky”, to explode as never before. 

Just one piece of evidence: Basel II, approved by G10 in June 2004, allowed the banks to lend to a sovereign rated like Greece holding only 1.6 percent of quite loosely defined bank capital (equity) while, if lending to a Greek small business or entrepreneur, they needed to hold 8 percent in capital. That allowed the banks to leverage their capital 62.5 times when lending to the Greek sovereign but only 12.5 times when lending to a Greek small business or entrepreneur. That, if the bank could make a net risk and cost adjusted margin of 1 percent when lending to either the sovereign the small business or the entrepreneur, meant the bank could expect to earn 62.5 percent on capital per year when lending to the Greek sovereign, compared to only 12.5 percent when lending to a Greek small business or entrepreneur. 

And of course the Greek sovereign received too much bank loans. And of course the Greek small business and entrepreneur received too little bank loans. 

And now when the Greek sovereign, as s direct result of this is in the absolute doldrums it cannot receive any more loans from banks, and Greek small businesses and entrepreneurs, those Greece most need to help it out of its current predicaments, are completely locked out from access to bank credit. 

I tell you, if I thought bank regulators had done this on purpose, to Greece, Europe and America, I would suggest shooting them… no doubt.

But what I cannot comprehend is how we can allow regulators who unwittingly were so dumb, to keep on regulating, to give us Basel III, which, with now also liquidity requirements based on ex-ante perceived risk, can only make it all so much worse. 

A nation is built and thrives on risk-taking. “God make us daring!” The moment the past, what has been built, “The Infallible”, becomes more valuable to its society than the future, what can be built, “The Risky”, and excessive risk adverseness sets in, the nation stalls and falls. It is as simple as that.