My proposal for this Earth Day 2015.

Stop using purposeless, dangerous and silly credit-risk weighted equity requirements for banks, those which allow banks to earn higher risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to those perceived as safe than when lending to "the risky".

Purposeless: because major bank crises never ever result from excessive exposures to what is perceived as “risky” but always from excessive exposures to what was erroneously perceived as “absolutely safe”. 

Dangerous: because that completely distorts the allocation of bank credit to the real economy.

Silly: because why on earth should we taxpayers lend our support to banks if their only goal is to act as safe mattresses to stash away money in. Better to build a super-safe storage facility then.

Begin using more purposeful potential of planet-earth sustainability, job generation and poverty reduction weighted equity requirements for banks.

That way our banks will earn their highest risk adjusted returns on their equity when financing what is deemed useful for the society.

That way it makes sense for us taxpayers to lend our banks the support they need, in order for these to take the astute risks we need for the world to move forward in a sustainable way generating jobs and poverty reduction.

Who shall you tell about this proposal? All bank regulators starting by the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board; and to multinational entities such as the UN, IMF, and World Bank.

If they do not listen to you, at least force them to try to justify why they are supporting current credit-risk weighted equity requirements. These only impede the access to bank credit of "the risky", thereby killing opportunities and increasing inequalities.

Standards and quality rating agencies for Knowledge Networks

How to guarantee the good quality of knowledge networks? was a question posed in the recent Mobilizing Knowledge Networks for Development at the World Bank.

At our table we conversed about the need for a Quality Standard, a sort of an ISO 9000, so that each participant was able to better identify what knowledge network he was getting involved with, so as not to lose his valuable time and efforts, or end up unwillingly exploited.

We also conversed about the possibility of having knowledge-network-quality rating agencies, rate the networks, initially based on some few but important variables, like the following:

Clarity of purpose

Clarity of rules of engagement

How it complies with the above (A network Ombudsman?)

True diversity (and respect for differing opinions)

If there is an interest out there in this community to further the discussions on this issue, at least I would be glad to participate, but someone else would have to manage that process, since because of other engagements I would not be able to get a good quality rating doing so.

perkurowski@gmail.com