A Bureaucracy Autocracy has been constructed with stealth
Sir, below I quote from Didi Kuo’s review of Moisés Naím’s “The Revenge of Power”, “How the world has been ‘made safe for autocracy’” Washington Post, April 24.
“Today’s autocrats are savvy, with new stratagems fit for a world upended by technological change. They exploit, and sow, distrust in experts, authorities, the media. They manufacture truth, invent enemies and use legal pretexts to consolidate power.”
The regulators in the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, launched Basel I in 1988. In order to “save” our banks from that “enemy” of excessive risk-taking, these “savvy” experts concocted risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements; and for which they decreed weights of 0% the government and 100% citizens.
That translated effectively into banks being able to leverage much more their capital/equity with e.g., Treasuries, than with loans to citizens. That has made it much easier for banks to obtain desired risk-adjusted returns on equity with Treasuries, than with any private sector assets. That de facto implies that bureaucrats know better what to do with credit for which repayment they’re not personally responsible for, than e.g., small businesses and entrepreneurs
You don’t need to take my word on it. Paul A. Volcker, in his 2018 autobiography “Keeping at it” which he penned together with Christine Harper, valiantly confessed: “Assets for which bank capital requirements were nonexistent, were what had most political support: sovereign credits. A simple ‘leverage ratio’ discouraged holdings of low-return government securities”
Add to that central banks’ QEs, which primarily includes the purchase of government debt, and the empowernment of a non-transparent Bureaucracy Autocracy becomes evident.
If that is not a prime example of “what Naím terms stealthocracy: a way of maintaining the architecture of liberal democracy while gutting accountability” what is?
Sir, as a Venezuelan just like Naím I too heard Hugo Chavez with concern and dislike. But, just like Venezuela’s centralized oil revenue curse has allowed truly bad autocrats to remain entrenched even when the walls are tumbling down, what I now most fear, is that world wide easy-government-money curse.
Let me also remind you Washington Post, that none of the excessive bank exposures that resulted in major crises, or bubbles that have burst, have ever been built up with assets perceived as risky, always with what was perceived as safe.
I could go on and on, but let me end with two questions:
The Founding Fathers of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, what would they have opined about the Federal Reserve decreeing risk weights of 0% the Federal Government and 100% We the People?
Where would America be today, if its immigrants centuries ago, had been met by this type of risk averse regulations?
PS. I have recently enlisted #AI ChatGPT - OpenAI to help me fight the Bureaucracy Autocracy. "What would you opine of risk weighted bank capital requirements with risk weights assigned for political reasons?"
Here's a letter the Washington Post published August 2023. It refers to Paul Volcker’s valiant courageous and honorable confession on what happened 1988. Thanks @PostOpinions for not ignoring it.
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