I wasn’t planning to write anything today, but in the Herald this morning there was an “interview” with Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr around the bank capital proposals. I put the word in quote marks, because it was more of a platform for the Governor to articulate his views and frustrations, than any searching or penetrating scrutiny.  I tweeted out a link which attracted a response from Newsroom’s Bernard Hickey

Twitter isn’t really conducive to a long list of possible questions (240 characters and all that) and I have more readers here than there, so I thought I’d jot down a few suggestions, a non-exhaustive list of possibilities, here.

1.  Given that proposals of this sort were always going to be controversial, why didn’t you adopt a more robust process from the start (eg technical workshops, green papers etc before the Governor signed up formally to a specific option)?
2. Especially so given that in this area you (single decisionmaker) can be seen as prosecutor, judge, and jury in your own case, without any rights of appeal?
3. Why did you not publish all the relevant documents when the consultation paper itself was released, rather than drip-feeding them out over months?
4. Why was there no proper cost-benefit analysis, with assumptions and senstivities clearly stated, published with the consultative document?
5. Why have you not published (or prepared?) a robust comparative assessment of your proposals relative to the capital rules proposed/in place in Australia, enabling submitters to see clearly the similarities/differences?
6. Why have you repeatedly attempted to slur all critics of your proposals as representing “vested interests”, rather than engaging with the substance of the arguments critics have made?
7. Wouldn’t your position, and preferences, appear more robust to disinterested parties if they could see you engaging with, and specifically responding to, alternative perspectives?
8. Are you willing to revisit the Bank’s previous decision on the inadmissibility of CoCos?  Given the relatively high level of CET1 capital, what grounds do you have not allowing (eg) CoCos issued to wholesale investors to meet any additional capital requirements the Bank considers warranted?
9. Wouldn’t the ability to issue CoCos to meet any additional capital requirements be particularly valuable to the (capital-constraind) New Zealand banks?
10. Why was there no discussion of OBR in the consultation document?  A credible OBR system appears to greatly reduce the need for any capital requirements (let alone very high ones), so does this absence suggest the Bank was walking back its support for OBR?
11. Where is the evidence for the claim, made several times in the recent Bank FSR, of evidence that the costs of financial crises are much higher than previously realised?  Realised by who, and when? (Bearing in mind that current capital requirements post-date 2008/09.)
12. You have taken to suggesting that the 2008/09 episode in New Zealand supports the need for further increases in bank capital.  GIven the very low level of loan losses and NPLs through that period –  a severe recession, after a dramatic run-up in credit to GDP – can you elaborate on your view?
13. Why was there no discussion/analysis of the probable transitional effects in the consultative document?
14. Why are you not proposing to impose the same higher capital requirements on NBDTs?  Won’t this further un-level the playing field?
15. What sort of disintermediation from the balance sheets of the big 4 locally incorporated banks do you expect to see, bearing in mind that the requirements don’t apply to (a) other non-bank lenders in New Zealand, (b) banks operating here that are not locally incorporated, (c) foreign banks not operating here, but lending to major New Zealand borrowers, or (d) to the domestic securities market?
16. How does this disintermediation square with the efficiency constraint that appear prominently in your Act (didn’t we experience lots of disintermediation in the 70s and early 80s?)
17. Do you agree that any costs of the higher capital requirements are likely to fall most severely on borrowers (and depositors) with the fewest alternative options?  Under that heading, is it likely modestly-sized borrowers with idiosnycratic needs (including farmers) will be among the harder hit?  If not, why not?
18. In your documents you do not seem to have engaged with the evidence that floating exchange rate countries that did not have a financial crisis in 2008/09 did not perform much differently than floating exchange rate countries that had a financial crisis?  Why not?  Doesn’t this suggest your “cost of crisis” assumptions are substantially overstated?
19. How, if at all, do you distinguish between the economic costs of a misallocation of resources during a credit boom (which higher capital requirements are unlikely to stop) –  but which only crystallise (and become apparent) in the bust – and those arising from the banking crisis itself?   There is no sign that you attempted to draw this distinction in any of your documents?
20. Why are you so reluctant to pay heed to repeated waves of Reserve Bank stress tests which suggest that very severe (appropriately so) adverse shocks would not severely impair the health of the New Zealand financial system, based on the lending standards adopted in the last decade or more?

And that was a list straight from the top of my head, without even pausing to check my submission on the proposals.  It wouldn’t be hard to come up with at least another twenty questions that journalists seriously interested in holding the Governor to account might reasonably ask.