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Förlorar banken en miljard måste den kräva låntagarna på 10–20 miljarder
En bank får låna ut 10–20 gånger sitt egna kapital.
Förlorar banken en miljard måste den alltså kräva låntagarna på 10–20 miljarder.
Det får konsekvenser i den reala ekonomin.
Tomas Fischer, Fokus 19/12 2008
Finanskrisen är värst i USA och Storbritannien där statsfinanserna är usla och hushållen skuldsatta över öronen. Brown, Sarkozy och Obama vill lösa problemen genom att vräka ut pengar och öka budgetunderskotten. Men fru Merkel och hennes finansminister Steinbrück ställer inte upp på keynesiansk expansion och jämförs nu med regeringen Brüning som banade väg för Hitler.
Fru Merkel har en åsiktsfrände i Anders Borg. Han kommer liksom Göran Persson från Katrineholm och vill inte förslösa arvet efter denne, nämligen starka statsfinanser.
If you have a pension pot of £100,000 and 10 per cent of it is invested in Greek government bonds,
then if the Greek government defaults completely you’re going to lose £10,000, 10 per cent.
That’s annoying, but the loss is not magnified.
But if your bank has 10 per cent of its investments in Greek government bonds, then when Greece defaults, your bank could be close to bankruptcy.
Tim Harford, FT, October 14, 2011
Banker bör givetvis inte plancera sina, och spararnas, pengar i statsobligationer.
Det passar bättre för försäkringsbolag där en förlust inte får samma utväxlning.
Men bankerna har sett till att politikerna har ordnade det för dem.
Rolf Englund blog 2011-09-01
How to Escape Basel III Doom Loop
What has been the biggest economic policy error of the post-Lehman era?
I used to think the answer was obvious. The euro zone's decision to impose losses on holders of Greek government bonds has been an unmitigated disaster, an entirely self-inflicted wound that has gravely destabilized the global economy.
But even as the euro-zone crisis unfolds, a potentially bigger man-made disaster looms. The Basel III global capital and liquidity rules
Simon Nixon, WSJ 7 October 2011
Two /IMF/ officials said one estimate showed that marking sovereign bonds to market
would reduce European banks’ tangible common equity – the core measure of their capital base – by about €200bn ($287bn), a drop of 10-12 per cent.
The impact could be increased substantially, perhaps doubled, by the knock-on effects of European banks holding assets in other banks.
FT, 31 August 2011
In a guest article, Alan Greenspan says banks will need much thicker capital cushions than they had before the bust
The Economist print edition, December 18th 2008
A drop in the value of assets of 2 per cent wipes out 40 per cent of the capital of an organisation such as a bank that is only 5 per cent owned by its shareholders.
According to rules developed by international financial bureaucrats in Basle over the past 20 years, a bank that has lost a big chunk of its capital must
- at least theoretically - shrink its assets to restore the sacred capital-to-assets ratio to its original level.
Tim Congdon, The Times October 2, 2008
Unfortunately, last year the wholesale money markets closed up for a wide variety of reasons, of which the most important was the fall in American house prices and the implications of that fall for the value of the structured finance securities. Triple-A securities dropped in value, often by 10 to 20 per cent. If such securities were, say, 10 per cent of high street bank assets then they had lost 1 or 2 per cent of the value of all their assets.
That sounds trifling, hardly enough to threaten the banks' charitable donations let alone the future of capitalism. But here comes the vicious arithmetic. A drop in the value of assets of 2 per cent wipes out 40 per cent of the capital of an organisation such as a bank that is only 5 per cent owned by its shareholders. According to rules developed by international financial bureaucrats in Basle over the past 20 years, a bank that has lost a big chunk of its capital must - at least theoretically - shrink its assets to restore the sacred capital-to-assets ratio to its original level.
A ghastly downward spiral, called "debt deflation", can now engulf the system. The banks can shrink their assets by selling off securities or forcing their customers to repay loans. But sales of securities aggravate the fall in their price, and forcing customers to repay loans is even more gruesome. As loan portfolios decline, so does the level of bank deposits. Bank deposits are the principal form of money in today's world. If the quantity of money goes down, so do asset prices, incomes and spending.
None of the above, despite its overwhelming significance for employment and living standards, is rocket science. Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has written extensively about the Great Depression of the 1930s, the worst example so far of debt deflation.
The downward spiral is caused by a logjam that prevents market agents from pricing assets correctly. The textbook answer is well known and was applied by the Bank of England on many occasions in the 19th and 20th centuries. The central bank, assisted by the Government, must move into the markets and buy up every decent security in sight. Instead of the triple-A securities trading at 80 or 85 cents, heavy official purchases could raise the price to 90 or 95 cents. The banks can start to write back their capital and to lend again, ending the crisis.