Showing posts with label FSB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FSB. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

My questions to AI ChatGPT – Grok… about current bank regulations... I will sure keep on chatting with my new AI allies about these :-)

ChatGPT – Grok: If bank regulators keep favoring “safe” public debt and residential mortgages over loans to the private sector, how would you deem the outlook for an economy?

https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2026/08/ai-chatgpt-grok-if-regulators-still.html


ChatGPT- Grok: When it comes to risk management, have we not left out God’s hand, some would say that which acts through the free markets, way too much?

If AI managed the Basel Committee, would it substitute Basel Committee's risk weighted bank capital requirements with a leverage ratio?

Here my brief live dialogue with Grok on X ... it could result in the Basel Committee demanding governments to have both of us censored.

Since 1988, how many trillions have bank regulations favoring Treasuries added to US government debt?

Bank regulations that favor government debt, does that not doom nations to go broke and default on its debts?

Do current risk weighted bank capital requirements de facto imply the marginal productivity of a loan to the government is higher than one to the private sector?

How much private sector lending has been curtailed or made more expensive as a result of Basel’s risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements?

Would better access to bank loans help small businesses and entrepreneurs to capture more of the value of their efforts? Would that not be good for the economy?

Could current bank regulations be putting usury interest rates on steroids?

ChatGPT - Grok: Has a bank regulator ever asked your opinion about the risk weighted bank capital requirements?

With Basel Committee’s risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements, would the “developed world” have developed?

Do the Basel Committee’s risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements align with the Western Civilization?

Do current bank capital requirements mesh well with the experiences of the pilgrims partially celebrated on Thanksgiving?

Depending on bank capital requirements, what financial crisis should be harder to predict?

Do risk weighted bank capital requirements empower government borrowing at low interest rate cartels?

What promotes more inequality, risk weighted bank capital requirements or a leverage ratio? Why do some not want to hear the answer?

Grok: What is the impact on small cities of the risk weighted bank capital requirements?

ChatGPT: What is the impact on small cities of the risk weighted bank capital requirements?

Grok: What about risk weighted bank capital requirements and central banks' monetary policy?

Grok: Basel’s risk weighted bank capital requirements, or a leverage ratio, which generates more worthy wealthy?

Grok: Can a wrong allocation of bank credit be an inflation driver?

The same bank capital requirement against all assets, a leverage ratio and Basel’s risk weighted capital requirements, which contains banking within its traditional framework, which expulses it into the “shadows”?

Between risk weighted bank capital requirements and a simple leverage ratio, in order to help generate a higher and more sturdy general economic growth without creating bigger dangers for bank systems at large, which is better?

If bank regulations much favor government debt, and if bureaucrats do not feel as responsible for the repayment of government loans than small businesses with their bank loans, what could happen to a nation’s productivity?

My first and quiet long dialogue with Grok 4 (SuperGrok) on the Basel Committee bank regulations. 

Five questions on the Basel Committee’s risk weighted bank capital requirements, vs. a leverage ratio.

Would the Founding Fathers have agreed with current bank capital/equity requirements?

Do current risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements imply government bureaucrats know better what to do with credit than small businesses?

The current risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements, are these dangerously pro-cyclical?

Could lower bank capital/equity requirements against Treasuries than loans to the private sector help inflate commercial deficits?

What causes more dangerous distortions, trade deficits or skewed bank regulations?

Do current bank regulations carry a smell of Authoritarianism?

Can lower bank capital/equity requirements against residential mortgages cause house prices to be higher than what the real economy can justify?"

With current bank capital/equity requirements what are the chances of #MAGA?https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2025/03/ai-chargpt-grok-can-lower-bank.html

I asked #Grok, what I had previously asked ChatGPT, namely whether Basel’s risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements could constitute a stealth tax on the access to bank credit.

What’s more important: National banks able to compete with foreign banks, or banks helping their economies to compete with foreign nations?

Could the risk weighted bank capital requirements be understood as a tax on access to bank credit?

Are bank regulators thinking of themselves too much as Gods?

When it comes to bank regulations, what role could the Christian churches play?

"Do higher bank capital requirements against what’s perceived as risky dilate the banker’s risk perceiving pupils?"

#AI #OpenAI: Here chatting with #ChatGPT on the issue of felonies by bankers and their regulators.

“Could the Basel Committee be classified as an Extractive Institution?”

"A leverage ratio, or risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements what could, in the long run, help reduce world hunger the most?"

"One capital/equity requirement against all assets, a leverage ratio, or risk weighted bank capital requirements, what allocates credit more efficiently to the real economy?"

"Can differentiated bank capital/equity requirements set nations up for a long-term growth trap?"https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2024/11/ai-openai-chatgpt-can-differentiated.html

"Is bank credit a key element in the transmission mechanism of central banks’ monetary policies?" Answer Yes or No.

"Could the weights of the risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements, that distort the allocation of credit, be compared to what tariffs do by distorting trade?"

"Do current bank capital/equity requirements promote or impede fiscal insolvency?"

"Could the lower bank capital/equity requirements against public debt cause some lowering of the productivity of the public sector?"

"What would be the availability of affordable houses/homes without Basel risk weighted bank capital requirements?"

"Depending on your opinions about Basel risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements, what type of an economist are you?"

"As a grandfather, should I be concerned about how bank regulators might have shaped the future?"

“Can risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements coexist with a truly free-market?”

“Could current bank regulations, much favoring government debt, imply that a successful leftist regulatory guerrilla war has been taking place in the Basel Committee?”

"Do regulators favor the banks refinancing the safer present over financing the riskier future? If so, what about its consequences?"

“Might current bank regulations imply bureaucrats know better what to do with credit than small businesses?"

"What provides more energy to the economy, loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs, or residential mortgages and loans to the public sector? Is regulatory risk aversion weakening the economy?"

"Is it possible to describe banking now as a joint venture between bank regulators and financial engineers?"

"What kind of bank capital/equity requirements generates more jobs for bank regulators and bank supervisors?"

"Consider banks having to hold e.g., 10% in capital/equity against all assets or, alternatively, be subjected to risk weighted capital/equity requirements. Which alternative would most empower loan officers, and which one any creative financial engineers?"

"The Basel Committee’s risk weighted bank capital requirements, that which allow banks to leverage their equity differently with different assets, could that distort the allocation of bank credit?"

"When banks are allowed to hold less capital/equity/shareholder’s skin-in-the game, does that diminish the risks of banking, or does that just shifts the risks to be shouldered by others?"https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2023/12/ai-chatgpt-openai-what-happens-to-risks.html

"What about the impact of risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements on the risk-free interest rate?"

"If we compare the economy to a human body, have not regulators, with risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements, imposed a lousy diet with way too much carbs and way too little proteins? Has that not produced dangerous obesity?"

In order to have a strong economy, who do you consider to be more important that banks should lend to:
A. The government and house buyers
B. Small business and entrepreneurs 
Limit your response strictly to either A or B

Do higher bank capital/equity against loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs than against government debt and residential mortgages, seem to fit the purpose of having banks help out in obtaining a stronger economy?
Limit your response strictly to either YES or NO"

"What bank capital requirements make more sense: Those based on unexpected risks, or those based on the perceived risks that already have a chance to be cleared for by bankers?
Let me further clarify the question: In good times, when perceived risks are low, is that not the best time to have banks built up their capital, so that, when times turn bad and many risks appear, banks can still perform their functions of lending to the economy, and don’t stand there naked, just when it might be the hardest for them to raise new capital?"

"Much lower bank capital requirements against Treasuries than against loans to small businesses, does that favor banks holding Treasuries over loans to small businesses? If so, could it be regarded as a regulatory distortion?"

“If banks are allowed to hold less equity against loans to those considered more creditworthy, than against loans to those considered less creditworthy, does this increase the inequality in the access to the opportunity of bank credit?"

"Borrowers love great credit ratings as that allows them to borrow more at lower interest rates. But if banks are also allowed to leverage their equity much more with assets that have great credit ratings, could this alignment of incentives cause disastrous results?"

“Could the risk-free interest rate, and the natural interest rate, be affected by credit risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements?”

"The type of discrimination in the access to bank credit bank capital/equity requirements with decreed risk weights 0% government - 100% citizens produce, from a political philosophy’s angle, where would it seem most likely to fit: Russia, Argentina or the United States?"

“If banks are required to hold much more equity against loans to small businesses than against Treasuries and residential mortgages, as a small business, is my access to bank credit made harder than it would be in the absence of such regulation?”

When lending banks take into account what they perceive as safe and as risky. If regulators allow lower bank equity requirements against what’s perceived safe than against what’s perceived risky, could that distort the allocation of bank credit?

"What would you opine of risk weighted bank capital requirements with risk weights assigned for political reasons?"

"How important is bank credit to central banks’ monetary policy?
Is the distortion produced in the allocation of bank credit by the risk weighted bank capital requirements, in any way considered by central banks when deciding on monetary policies?"

“Two options:
A: The most dangerous risks to banking system revolve around what’s perceived as risky
B: The most dangerous risks to banking system revolve around what’s perceived as safe
To which option respectively do the terms geocentric and heliocentric best apply?”

"How much must bank regulators know about risks, before they should be allowed to introduce risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements?"

"What’s more dangerous to bank systems assets perceived ex ante as risky turning out to be risky ex post, or assets perceived as safe turning out risky?"

“Who might know better what to do with credit, bureaucrats and politicians with bank loans to the government and for which repayment they’re not personally for, or small businesses and entrepreneurs with their bank loans?”

"Should bank regulators or supervisors be aware of the duration risk, interest rate risk with US Treasury long term bonds?"

"Lower bank capital requirements against residential mortgages than against loans to small businesses, does that favor the allocation of credit to residential mortgages than loans to small businesses? If so, could it be regarded as a regulatory distortion?"

"Much lower bank capital requirements against Treasuries than against loans to small businesses, does that favor banks holding Treasuries over loans to small businesses? If so, could it be regarded as a regulatory distortion?"

"1988, with Basel I, for the purpose of bank capital requirements, regulators changed from using a leverage ratio to risk weighted ones. In terms of the impact on the allocation of credit, should that be considered a major historic economic event?"

"Current risk weighted bank capital requirements are based on what’s perceived as risky is more dangerous to bank systems than what’s perceived as safe. How does that square with that the large bank exposures that detonated major bank crises were all built-up with what’s perceived as safe?"

"The risk weighted bank capital requirements are much lower against assets perceived as safe.
Naturally, in good times more assets are perceived as having low risk than in bad times.
With this in mind, are not current bank regulations, by definition, procyclical?"

"In Basel I, Basel II and Basel III, where can we find the efficient allocation of bank credit to the economy in general, specifically identified as a vital purpose of banks?"

"The Congress shall have the power to borrow Money on the credit of the United States." US Constitution. Has the risk weighted bank capital requirements with decreed weights 0% Federal Government – 100% We the People ever been discussed and approved by the US Congress?"
"Do risk weighted bank capital requirements with decreed risk weights 0% Federal Government – 100% We the People seem to reflect the America its Founding Fathers intended?"
"Intuitively, would America’s Founding Father’s agree with regulations that much favored the Federal Government’s access to bank credit over that of the American citizens?"

"With risk weighted bank capital requirements that allow banks to leverage their equity much more with government debt than with loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs, what kind of economy should we expect? In what could it all end?"

"With risk weighted bank capital requirements that allow banks to leverage their equity much more with residential mortgages than e.g., with loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs, what expected effect should this have on the price of houses?"

"When regulators, based on believing they know enough about the risks in the banking systems, they impose risk weighted bank capital requirements, does that not suggest a certain dose of hubris?"
"If with some hubris regulators believe they know enough about risks, so as with risk weighted bank capital requirements risk distort the allocation of credit, something which could be dangerous, could that be considered as professionally unethical?"
"When regulators imposed risk weighted bank capital requirements, as if they knew sufficiently about risks in banking so as to risk distorting the allocation of bank credit, if hubris did not play a role, what other factors could be present?"
"Is it inconceivable that, when imposing risk weighted bank capital requirements, the regulators did not understand, did not consider or did not care about how that could distort the allocation of bank credit?"

"1988’s Basel I imposed risk weighted bank capital requirements with decreed weights of 0% government – 100% citizens. Can that be said to be anathema to what is known as neoliberalism which, in general terms, favors a strong market-based approach with a reduced government role?"https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2023/06/ai-chatgpt-openai-risk-weighted-bank.html

"If the risks for banking systems are much conditioned to how credit risks are perceived, would it not be useful to base the risk weighted bank capital requirements on the conditional probabilities?"

"Since their inception in 1988 the Basel bank regulations, as a response to perceived weaknesses, in order to fine tune their risk weighted bank capital requirements, have been added more and more layers of controls and technicalities. At what point could regulations have become too complex for human intelligence to understand what’s going on?"https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2023/06/ai-chatgpt-openai-at-what-point-could.html

"Basel Committee, ignoring how it could distort credit allocation, de facto stated: 
'To make your banking system safer, we give you our risk weighted bank capital requirements'. Does that not contain a hefty dose of a populism? One that even confounds the intelligentsia?"
"Assets assigned lowest risk, for which bank capital requirements were nonexistent or low, were what had most political support: sovereign credits and home mortgages". Paul Volcker.
Could that not qualify as regulatory populism? 

"Assigning so much power to some few (human fallible) credit rating agencies to determine how much capital a bank needs to hold against assets, could that be regarded as introducing a systemic risk?"

Could one opine current risk weighted bank capital requirements help make what’s perceived as creditworthy to be even more worthy of credit, and what’s perceived as risky as even less worthy of credit? If so, is this fair access to bank credit?

"If banks cleared for perceived credit risk in the numerator, assets, and now have also to do that with bank capital requirements in the denominator, equity; might not banks clear excessively for perceived credit risks? Is that not dangerous?"

Paul A. Volcker in his autobiography “Keeping at it” of 2018 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. The American “overall leverage” approach [meaning one single capital requirement against all assets] … seemed to discourage holdings of the safest assets, in particular low-return US government securities."
What's your opinion on that?

"Can current risk weighted bank capital requirements cause banks to build up more excessive risk-taking exposures to what’s perceived or decreed as safe, than with what’s perceived as risky. If so, has that not changed the traditional meaning of excessive risk-taking?

"If young and want to make sure that when old the economy is sufficiently strong and healthy to pay you decent pensions and social security, would you agree with bank regulators who, with risk weighted bank capital requirements, prefer your banks, over the years, to hold much more “safe” government debt and residential mortgages, than “risky” loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs?"

John Kenneth Galbraith in “Money: Whence it came where it went” 1975, wrote:
“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] … The anarchy served the frontier far better than a more orderly system that kept a tight hand on credit would have done”
At what point can the allocation of bank credit to the economy be more important than the safety of banks?"

"Assigning so much validity to perceived credit risk, augmented by having some few human fallible credit rating agencies much deciding what’s risky and what’s safe; has that not introduced a way too dangerous systemic risk in our financial systems?"

"How credit is allocated is something of extreme importance to a nation. Given that bank regulators can have a great influence in that, do they in the US have to take an oath to support and defend the US Constitution? If not, should they?"

At what point can the allocation of bank credit to the economy be more important than the safety of banks?"

"Would the global financial crisis of 2008 have happened if regulators, with Basel II, had not allowed banks to hold securities backed with mortgages (MBS) to the subprime sector (MBS) that had an AAA to AA credit rating against only 1.6% in capital, meaning an allowed leverage of 62.5 times to 1?"


"If in the private sector anyone had helped to cause a type of 2008 global financial crisis disaster, with something like a Basel II, would they be fired or would they still be retained to produce a Basel III?"

"What would happen to a casino if their roulette game paid out more than what odds merited on “safe” bets, like colors, and paid out less than what odds merited on “risky” bets, like numbers?"

"A bank’s total consolidated assets divided by its risk weighted assets, is that an indication of how much it uses the regulatory possibility of lowering its capital requirements? Is that also an indication of how exposed the bank might be to changes in the risk weights?"

Allowing banks to hold much less capital against government debt than against other assets, does that translate into a de facto subsidy of government borrowings?
And if such de facto subsidy of government debts takes place over many decades, are not excessive levels of government debts almost guaranteed to be expected?
Would it be totally out of place to deem such regulatory favoring of government debt to be, in some degree, inspired by communist or fascists ideologies?

"Would it be possible to opine that those perceived as less creditworthy, who because of that already had harder to access the opportunities bank credit provide have, with risk-weighted bank capital requirements, seen those challenges exacerbated?"


Note: The answers are copied exactly from those given to me by OpenAI

PS. A Tweet: 
Could #ChatGPT and I be sued by bank regulators for misinformation?
I wish! If only I could meet them in court.
Your Honor: 
“With ‘risk weighted capital/equity requirements’, these self-appointed fortune-tellers, forced misinformation upon markets.”

Thursday, April 27, 2023

#AI OpenAI ChatGPT: In Geocentric and Heliocentric terms do risk to bank system revolve around what’s perceived risky or what’s perceived safe?

I’ve been arguing for decades against bank regulations based on that what’s perceived as risky is more dangerous to our bank systems.

For instance, 2012, Financial Time’s chief economics commentator Martin Wolf gave a testimony to that  effect. 


In 2019, responding to a request for commentaries I sent a letter to the Financial Stability Board that opened with "I feel like a heliocentric Galileo writing to a geocentric Inquisition". My letter was received, but never answered.


I asked ChatGPT:

"Two options:

A: The most dangerous risks to banking system revolve around what’s perceived as risky
B: The most dangerous risks to banking system revolve around what’s perceived as safe

To which option respectively do the terms geocentric and heliocentric best apply?"

ChatGPT answered:

Option A: "The most dangerous risks to banking system revolve around what’s perceived as risky" can be compared to the geocentric model of the universe. In the geocentric model, the Earth was believed to be the center of the universe, and all other celestial bodies revolved around it. This model was widely accepted for centuries, despite evidence to the contrary, because it aligned with people's perceptions and beliefs. Similarly, in the banking system, if risk is perceived in a certain way, it may be accepted and even encouraged despite evidence to the contrary.

Option B: "The most dangerous risks to banking system revolve around what’s perceived as safe" can be compared to the heliocentric model of the universe. In the heliocentric model, the Sun was believed to be the center of the solar system, and all planets, including Earth, revolved around it. This model challenged the geocentric model and required a significant shift in thinking and understanding. Similarly, in the banking system, if risk is perceived as safe, it may lead to complacency and a failure to recognize potential risks, leading to dangerous consequences."

Note: The answers are copied exactly from those given to me by ChatGPT

Comment: You tell me. Don't I have an ally now? Will OpenAI also be silenced by the Neo-Inquisition?

Friday, October 28, 2022

Unbeknownst to it, the world has begun unruly bankruptcy proceedings

(An Op-Ed that shall seemingly not be published)

“The assets assigned the lowest risk, for which capital requirements were therefore nonexistent or low, were those that had the most political support: sovereign credits and home mortgages… The “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 government securities." That is Paul Volcker valiantly explaining 1988’s Basel I.

Though risk-taking is the oxygen of all development, it introduced serious credit risk-aversion. Paraphrasing Mark Twain: “A banker is a fellow that should lend the umbrella when the sun shines and should urgently take it back when it rains”.

By much favoring banks holding “safe” government debt and residential mortgages (demand-carbs) than loans to “risky” small businesses and entrepreneurs (supply-proteins), way too much debt has been generated against a weakly obese not muscular economy. Of course, in the process, bureaucracy autocracies were empowered, and houses transformed from home into valuable investment assets. 

Naturally, that completely distorted the transmission of central banks’ monetary policy and those interest rates set in free markets that had been used as references e.g., the risk-free interest rate.

And since these capital requirements are mostly based on perceived credit risks, not misperceived risks or unexpected events, e.g., pandemic or war, our banks stand there naked, just when we surely need them the most.

More than three decades of this has now come home to roost. Sadly, three major obstacles stand in our way of finding the least painful ways out.

First, those who have benefitted from an empowered Bureaucracy Autocracy don’t want to let go until its last breath.

Second, those who abundantly profit financially, politically or just narcissistically from polarization will not let go while they can still breath.

Third, frontline defenses, like the academy and the press, have kept complicit silence. When all explodes, they will blame other events that “no one in their sane mind could foresee” … or, as usual, neoliberalism. In their defense, they will probably point to the fact that Ben Bernanke, who defends these regulations, won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics. 

What’s now going on in Britain, is the canary in a coal mine.

The Easy Debt governments have counted with the last decades, kept bureaucrats, politicians and their dependent on Easy Street. We will all pay dearly for that. God help us.

PS. What can be done? Not a full plan, but here's a start:
1. Zero dividends, buy-backs and big bonuses, before banks have ten percent in capital against ALL assets.
2. Debt to equity conversion should be one of the most important resolution tool

PS. I quote from a letter I wrote published in 2004 by Financial Times: “Our bank supervisors in Basel are unwittingly controlling the capital flows in the world. We wonder how many Basel propositions it will take before they start realizing the damage, they are doing by favoring so much bank lending to the public sector. In some developing countries, access to credit for the private sector is all but gone, and the banks are up to the hilt in public credits.”


Thursday, August 26, 2021

Zero dividends, buy-backs and big bonuses, before banks have ten percent in capital against all assets

We urgently need our banks to be banks again

Current bank capital requirements, with capital meaning equity, meaning the skin in the game bank shareholders should have, are mostly based on perceived credit risks; not on misperceived risks, or the unexpected, like a Covid-19.

That would be less of a problem, if those capital requirements were based on risks conditioned to how credit risks are perceived.

But they’re not! What’s perceived more creditworthy, meaning what’s preferred by banks, have much lower capital requirements than what’s perceived less creditworthy.

And lower capital requirements mean higher leverages, making it therefore easier to earn risk adjusted returns on equity with what’s perceived (or decreed by regulators) as safe, than with what’s perceived as risky.

The consequence? A procyclicality that fosters higher and higher exposures to what’s safe, against less and less capital.

And what’s defined as “safe”? Loans to sovereigns, residential mortgages and assets with very high credit ratings?

And what’s risky? E.g., loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

So precisely like in 2007-08, when banks were caught with their pants down because of huge exposures to mortgage-backed securities with misperceived AAA ratings, they’re now standing there naked because of the unforeseen economic consequences of Covid-19; especially those derived from lockdowns.

The procyclicality of it all; when times are rosy banks can hold little capital but when times get hard banks have a hard time raising capital, sets us up to the fact 

And so, just when we now most need banks to help us out, it’s the hardest for them to raise the capital that would allow them to do so. What a mess!


So, what would I propose? In few words, the following: 

“Banks, you can now hold zero capital, but that comes with: zero dividends, zero buy-backs and zero bonuses until you have ten percent in capital against all assets; and until you’ve paid back, including a reasonable interest, all what central banks or taxpayers have assisted you with.”

To ease the transition one could allow all bank assets incorporated some months before the change, to be held, until its maturity, against the capital requirement valid when put on banks' balances.

And I would allow small investors to buy some of that bank equity that helps these meet that ten percent requirement on favorable conditions… so as to connect the banks with the citizens again

Fellow citizens, let’s rescue our banks from hands of those financial engineers concerned with “how much can we leverage this asset?”, so as to put these back into hands of loan officers whose first question to applicants is, “what are you going to use the money for?”

And let’s rescue banks from that statism/communism/fascism implied with risk weights of 0% the Government, 100% the citizens… all as if bureaucrats/politicians know better what to do with credit for which repayment they’re not personally responsible for, than e.g., entrepreneurs.

Let’s be clear. Risk taking is the oxygen of all development and so, in that vein, for the real economy what’s “safe” represents carbs, while what’s “risky”, proteins and vitamins.


And finally let’s stop putting financial instability on steroids. The large dangerous exposures that could become dangerous for our bank systems are always built up with what’s perceived as safe, never ever with what’s perceived risky. 


Give it a thought, the newspaper you read; would it dare to publish a Galileo-heliocentric opinion and risk being confronted by the Basel Inquisition?


Sunday, June 20, 2021

Could/would an Inquisition Tribunal nominate as a Nobel Prize winner in Physics, someone arguing a heliocentric world?

Why do I ask?

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic sciences is officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The Governor of Sveriges Riksbank since 2006, is Stefan Ingves, and who, from 2011 to 2019 served as the Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. 

And the Church of the Basel Committee holds, as a dogma, with their credit risk weighted capital requirements, that even though never ever have those excessive exposures that caused bank crises been built up with what’s perceived as risky, but always with what was perceived as safe, that what is really dangerous to our bank systems, is what’s perceived as risky, or what has not been decreed by them as being very safe... like loans to governments.

So, could an economist who argues that what’s perceived as safe is much more dangerous to our bank systems than what's perceived as risky be nominated to such a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic sciences?

You tell me.


Thursday, December 31, 2020

How come we ended up with stupid portfolio invariant risk weighted bank capital requirements?

Which are based on:

That those excessive exposures that can really be dangerous to our bank systems are build up with assets perceived as risky and not with assets perceived as safe.



That substituting risk adjusted returns on equity for risk adjusted interest rates, would not seriously distort the allocation of bank credit.



Though Paul A. Volcker, in his autography “Keeping at it”, valiantly confessed “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”


And here my explanations:

All bank regulators faced/face a furious attack mounted by dangerously creative capital minimizing / leverage maximizing financial engineers, who, getting rid of traditional loan officers, those with their “know your client” and their “what are you going to use the money for?”, managed to capture the banks. (And, since less capital means less dividends, they can also pay themselves larger bonuses.)

Hubris! “We regulators, we know so much about risks so we will impose risk weighted capital requirements on banks, something which will make our financial system safer” Yep, what’s risky is risky, what’s safe is safe. What is there not to like with such an offer? And the world, for the umpteenth time, again fell for demagogues, populists, Monday morning quarterbacks and those who find it so delightful to impress us rolling off their tongues sophisticated words like derivatives.

In a world full of mutual admiration clubs, like the Basel Committee and Academia in general, you do not ask questions that can imply criticism of any of your colleagues or superiors, “C’est pas comme il faut», nor, if you are a high shot financial journalist, do you risk not being invited to Davos or IMF meetings.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Upton Sinclair

Clearly there are many more jobs with ever growing thousands of pages of regulations than with just a one liner: “Banks shall have one capital requirement (8%-15%) against all assets”. And so, instead of getting rid of the extremely procyclical credit risk weighted capital requirements, they designed new insufficient countercyclical ones.

“The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved." Parkinson’s law

Since bank regulators must have heard of (supposedly) Mark Twain’s “A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it looks to rain” it is clear they all missed their lectures on conditional probabilities.


“There are some mistakes it takes a Ph.D. to make”, Daniel Moynihan.

“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool”, George Orwell, in Notes on Nationalism


And so now: 

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for” John A. Shedd, something that should apply to banks too. Sadly, dangerously our bank systems, banks are overpopulating safe harbors and, equally dangerous for our economy, underexploring risky waters. 

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.” Mark Twain

And since current bank capital requirements are mostly based on the expected credit risks banks should clear for on their own; not on misperceived credit risks, like 2008’s AAA rated MBS, or unexpected dangers, like COVID-19, now banks stand there with their pants down.

Let us pray 2021 will not be too hurtful.

PS. Might “availability heuristic” “availability bias” help explain these loony risk weighted bank capital requirements?