Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornstock
Right now the economic trend has been Quantitative Easing (QE) to stimulate the economy. This involves the central bank's buying Mortgage Backed Securities to infuse the market with cash. This isn't a bad idea, but at least in the US, the consequence has run into a political obstacle.
With all of the capital requirement changes that occurred after 2008, banks are required to keep more cash on hand in case of emergencies. Their Tier 1 Capital Ratios for small banks was 5.5-7%, and for large banks it was even less. Now they are required to maintain over 10%.
What this means is that a huge bank with 10s of billions of dollars of assets are no longer allowed to lend those 10s of billions. It is required to be dead money. This added to more stringent requirements in lending, so banks can only lend to superbly qualified businesses/individuals makes for a disaster that was really unforseen.
Money multiplier theory says that a dollar lent can be multiplied something like 27 times. So if a bank is required to keep 30 billion in dead money, this would have otherwise been an 810 billion dollar infusion into the economy, which would have spurred economic growth. (Imagine your small business getting a small chunk if that).
So the banks are taking the money that is being infused by QE and putting it straight towards their reserves, instead of injecting it into the economy. This is why no one has seen any real effect of QE until recently, now that the reserves are topped off and in compliance.
I know no one likes big banks, but they are an integral part of our economy, and by handcuffing them it hurts everyone. But Bernie and the like don't recognize this and just want more regulations. They need to be loosened up so the banks are allowed to lend.
I know this is kind of long, but it may be the first time anyone has explained to you WHY these new bank regulations are so bad, rather than just saying that big banks are bad and greedy and they deserve to be punished.
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Really good post.
I'm not informed on banking enough to know what the reserve requirements
should be, but I know the regulations are hot garbage. At least the ones that trickled down to my local bank, which I understand are markedly different than commercial banks.