Wednesday, November 25, 2015

16 tweet-sized fundamental mistakes with regulatory credit-risk weighted capital requirements for banks… and counting

The regulators are regulating the banks without having defined the purpose of the banks. 

Regulators ignored that banks need and should allocate credit efficiently to the real economy.

Regulators ignore that for the society, what is not on the balance sheet of banks, could be as important as what is.

To allow bank equity to be leveraged with net margins of assets differently, distorts the allocation of bank credit.

The scarcer the bank capital is, the greater the distortions produced by the risk weighted capital requirements.

Bank capital is to cover for unexpected losses, yet regulators base the requirements on expected credit risks.

The safer something is perceived the greater is its potential for unexpected losses.

The risk of a bank has little to do with perceived risk of assets, and much to do with how the bank manages risks.

Banks clear for credit risk with interest rates and exposures, so to also do in the capital double-counts that risk.

Any perfectly perceived risk causes the wrong actions if the risk is excessively considered.

The standard risk weights that determine the capital requirements for banks are, amazingly, portfolio invariant.

The undue importance given to few information sources, credit rating agencies, introduced a serious systemic risk.

That imposing similar and specific regulations on any system stiffens it and increases its fragility was ignored.

Any regulatory constraint that can be gamed will be gamed and benefit the worst gamers in detriment of lesser gamers.

A risk weight of zero percent for the sovereign, and of 100 percent for the private sector, is pure unabridged statism.

Impeding “the risky” to have fair access to bank credit blocks opportunities and thereby increases inequality

Consequences: Too much bank credit against too little capital to whatever is perceived or can be construed as being safe, and too little credit to what is perceived as risky. In other words banks that do not finance the “risky” future, but only refinance the “safer” past.

Questions: Of these mistakes how many have been sufficiently debated and corrected? How many of the responsible for these mistakes have been held accountable?