¶ In his column this morning, Joe Nocera writes about capital requirements for banks (the subject of an international convention that will be known as “Basel III”) and how unpopular they are with bankers. “Banks always want capital requirements to be as low as possible, because the less capital they have, the more risk they can take and thus the more money they can make (and the bigger the executives’ bonuses).” Underline that parenthesis — well-compensated executives everywhere identify with their paladin-rentier class far more than they do with any employer/institution — and ask yourself, as we do, if greater risk-taking by (not very bright) bankers leads to an increase in freaked-out panic, as we saw in the credit crunch of 2008. Meanwhile, note that the Rentier Party (a/k/a “Republican”) is obstructing the legislative imposition of higher capital requirements, taking the view, shared by no one who is not a rentier or a rentier’s tool, that capital requirements are unnecessary.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 at 10:30 am.