February 28, 2014

Divorce counselors should urgently remind banks and regulators of the kids, the real economy.

Sir I refer to Gillian Tett´s proposal of having conflict specialists, sort of “divorce lawyers”, handling some of the issues derived from conflicts arising from regulatory differences in different regulatory jurisdictions, “Regulators may disagree but should say who calls the shots”, February 28.

On one hand banks, naturally, want to make as high return on their equity as possible and, on the other, current regulators want banks to avoid taking any risks.

And the result of all the bickering has been that banks are now allowed to earn huge risk adjusted returns on equity, as long as they lend to what for the moment van be perceived as “absolutely safe”, like any “infallible sovereigns”, the housing sector, and the AAAristocracy… so that banks stay away from lending to those perceived as “risky”, the medium and small businesses, the entrepreneurs and start-ups.

And so I would instead hold that it is more urgent to call in divorce counselors so as to remind the parties of the fact that you cannot possibly discriminate this way in the family, the real economy, without it breaking down.