#credit availability

As was evident throughout Chairman Powell’s most recent appearances before HFSC and Senate Banking, conflict between capital and credit availability characterizes what is to come of the “end-game” capital rules set for imminent release.  The trade-off is said to be between safer banks and a sound economy, but this is far too simple.  As we’ve seen over and over again as capital rules rise, credit availability stays the same or even increases.  What changes is who makes the loans and what happens to borrowers and the broader macro framework, which in the past has been irrevocably altered.  The real trade-off is thus between lending from banks and the stable financial intermediation this generally ensures and lending from nonbanks and the risks this raises not just to financial stability, but also to economic equality.

As post-2008 history makes clear, banks do not stop lending when capital requirements go up; they stop taking certain balance-sheet risks based on how the sum total of often-conflicting risk-based, leverage, and stress-test rules drives their numbers.  That all these rules push and pull banks in often-different directions is at long last known to the Fed based on Vice Chair Barr’s call for a “holistic review”.  Whether it plans to do anything about them and their adverse impact on the future of regulated financial intermediation remains to be seen.  Until something is done, banks will look across the spectrum of capital rules, spot the highest requirement, and then figure out how best to remain profitable …