Should there be clawbacks clauses for university professors? Yes! Especially for finance professors.

University professors have been able to earn much higher salaries thanks to the availability to their students of credit for education.

Now many of their students are struggling to repay their loans, because market conditions, and the economic benefits of education, did not turn out as expected.

So clearly there is a case to ask whether there should not be some claw-back clauses applicable to them

I surely think so, and especially in the case of the professors in finance.

There, right before their eyes, with Basel I in 1988, and with Basel II in 2004, the bank regulators introduced risk weighted capital requirements for banks.

And these regulations discriminated against that financing of the riskier future that the students needed to be financed in order to aspire to get good paying jobs; and those regulations discriminated in favor of the safer present that had grown out of the risk-taking of the past, and which was of more interest to soon retiring professors.

I believe that never ever before, has an education community let down its students so much.

There’s just got to be some formal claw-back.

PS. Here again is an aide memoire that explains some of the regulatory monstrosities.

My number umpteenth effort to explain to XXX the very bad of current bank regulations.

A “risky asset” yields more, let us say 15%.

A “safe asset” yields less, let us say 5%.

And those yields would be deemed by the market as equal risk adjusted yields.

And market participants would buy those assets according to their needs and risk appetites.

But then came the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision with its risk weighted capital requirements for banks, more risk more equity – less risk less equity, and that completely distorted the allocation of bank credit.

Because now banks could leverage their equity more with safe assets and thereby obtain higher risk adjusted returns on safe assets than with risky assets.

As a result the overall market demand for safe assets increased, and that of risky assets decreased. That “risky asset” yielding 15% before, might now have to yield 16% or more. That “safe asset” yielding 5% before, might now just yield 4% or less.

Is this good? Of course not! Regulators, probably without even understanding what they were doing, altered the free market’s risk assessments; causing dangerous overpopulation of safe havens; and, for the real economy, equally dangerous under-exploration of the risky bays where SMEs and entrepreneurs usually reside. 

The net result of it is:

Crises, like that of 2007-08, resulting from excessive exposures to what was perceived, decreed or concocted as safe, like AAA rated securities and loans to sovereigns (Greece)

Stagnation, resulting from all the stimulus, like that of QEs, not flowing freely to where they are most needed, but only populating more and more the remaining safe havens.

In other words this damn piece of regulation has our banks no longer financing the riskier future but only refinancing the safer past; and so we are doomed to doom and gloom, and to run out of safe havens.

Of course, having set the risk weight for loans to sovereigns at 0% and to We the People, the regulators also introduced, through the backdoor in 1988, a powerful pro-statism tool.

The distortions are not even acknowledged by the regulators, much less discussed.

God help needing pensioners and job seeking youth! God help us all!

PS. If you have understood this and want more details on the greatest regulatory faux pas in history you might want to read the following more extensive aide memoire.

PS. Here are some of my past explanations for dummies.

PS. Today 50% of my constituency, my grandchildren, gets to be 5 years old.

Must we respect central bank’s independency even if they go crazy and statist?

What is this with QEs injecting huge amounts of money buying government debt because that is supposedly safer? Who on earth can believe government bureaucrats know better what to do with other peoples’ money than citizens with their own? 

What is this with negative interest? Just months ago the elderly were to retire later, in order for their sacked by the government pension or social security funds to be able to pay them something… and now they are to retire as fast as possible to get at least something? 

What on earth is this with the risk weights that determine the capital requirements for banks? 100 percent for the citizens, and zero percent for the government? They’ve got to be kidding.

What on earth is this with the risk weights that determine the capital requirements for banks? Higher when financing the riskier future than when refinancing the safer past? Just wait till our kids find out! 

Are we sure we have not packed our central banks with Chauncey Gardiners?

PS. Since I now do not even trust the pilots, I don’t want Helicopter money any more, just a Universal Basic Income.

PS. 2006 Long-term benefits of a hard landing