Thursday, January 31, 2013

Losers and winners

The losers are no doubt those countries that insist in their banks needing to have more capital when lending to “The Risky” than when lending to “The Infallible”. 

The winners will be those countries that praying “God make us daring!” understand that in order to make up for the natural risk-adverseness of bankers, it behooves them to require the banks to hold slightly less capital when lending to “The Risky” than when lending to “The infallible”. 

That is how wrong our current bank regulators are. 

The fools are those who keep writing about this crisis being caused by excessive risk-taking when it was caused by excessive exposures to what was considered as “absolutely safe” and against which the regulators therefore required the banks to hold minuscule capital. 

You want to disappear? Then stay in your beds and don’t dare to take any risks. As easy as that!