ASI report "No Stress" features in the Financial Times

Adam Smith Institute report "No Stress: The flaws of the Bank of England's stress testing programme" has featured in the Financial Times:

The Bank of England’s stress tests of the banking sector have been attacked as “fatally flawed” for setting hurdles that are too easy to clear and giving false comfort about the safety of the financial system.

A report published on Thursday by the Adam Smith Institute, a free market think-tank, calls for the BoE annual stress tests to be scrapped, arguing they are “worse than useless” because they disguise weakness in the UK banking system.

The report has been written by Kevin Dowd, professor of finance and economics at Durham University, who is a vocal critic of the tests and criticised them at a Treasury select committee hearing in March.

Read the full article here.

ASI report, “No Stress: the flaws in the Bank of England’s stress testing programme”, examines the Bank of England’s stress testing programme and challenges the Bank’s conclusion that the UK banking system has sufficient capital to withstand a new downturn and suggests that the UK banking system is actually very weak.

The report argues that the stress tests are fatally flawed because they use a very low ‘pass’ standard, a 4.5 percent minimum ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. This minimum is well below those coming through under Basel III. Had the Bank carried out a test using these latter minima, the banking system would have failed the test.

ASI report "No Stress" features in City AM

Adam Smith Institute report "No Stress: The flaws of the Bank of England's stress testing programme" has featured in City AM:

A THINK tank has called for an end to regulatory stress tests on banks, saying they are “sleep- walking” the sector into another financial crisis.

The Adam Smith Institute, a free market think tank, said the annual Bank of England tests – which are used to gauge the resilience of banks to volatile financials scenarios – gave false comfort to lenders because the rules were not rigorous enough.

It added the tests failed to apply a minimum ratio of capital to leverage for UK banks, which would have shown the banks to be weaker than when tested on risk weighted assets.

Read the full article here.

ASI report, “No Stress: the flaws in the Bank of England’s stress testing programme”, examines the Bank of England’s stress testing programme and challenges the Bank’s conclusion that the UK banking system has sufficient capital to withstand a new downturn and suggests that the UK banking system is actually very weak.

The report argues that the stress tests are fatally flawed because they use a very low ‘pass’ standard, a 4.5 percent minimum ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. This minimum is well below those coming through under Basel III. Had the Bank carried out a test using these latter minima, the banking system would have failed the test.

ASI report "No Stress" features in the Yorkshire Post

Adam Smith Institute report "No Stress: The flaws of the Bank of England's stress testing programme" has featured in the Yorkshire Post:

The Bank of England’s banking stress tests are highly unreliable and could be “worse than useless”, a report has warned.

Libertarian think-tank the Adam Smith Institute said the Bank’s assessment of how well funded institutions should be could provide “false comfort”.

Regular stress testing - checking banks and building societies have enough cash to weather market shocks - was introduced in 2014 as a way to assess the strength of the sector.

These tests are “fatally flawed” because they use a single scenario test with a low pass rate, the think-tank claimed.

Read the full article here.

ASI report, “No Stress: the flaws in the Bank of England’s stress testing programme”, examines the Bank of England’s stress testing programme and challenges the Bank’s conclusion that the UK banking system has sufficient capital to withstand a new downturn and suggests that the UK banking system is actually very weak.

The report argues that the stress tests are fatally flawed because they use a very low ‘pass’ standard, a 4.5 percent minimum ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. This minimum is well below those coming through under Basel III. Had the Bank carried out a test using these latter minima, the banking system would have failed the test.

Press Release: Bank of England's stress tests deeply flawed, 'worse than useless' says new report

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Head of Communications Kate Andrews: kate@adamsmith.org | 07584 778207

• The Bank of England’s banking stress tests are highly unreliable; methodological flaws may provide false risk comfort that make them worse than useless.

• The stress tests build systemic instability into the UK banking system, pressuring banks to converge to the same models and risk management practices, and making them all blind to the same risks.

• These flaws include their dependence on a single scenario and their use of ‘risk-weighted’ asset measures, which are unreliable because of their dependence on gameable risk models, and the use of a very low ‘pass’ standard, a 4.5% minimum ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets.

• Even accepting the Bank’s own scenario, alternative tests using a higher capital standard or the superior leverage ratio would indicate that the UK banking system is actually very vulnerable.

The Bank of England’s banking stress tests are deeply flawed and may prove to be worse than useless if they give false risk comfort to financial markets, according to a new report from one of the UK’s top stress testing experts, released today by the Adam Smith Institute.

The report, “No Stress: the flaws in the Bank of England’s stress testing programme”, examines the Bank of England’s stress testing programme and challenges the Bank’s conclusion that the UK banking system has sufficient capital to withstand a new downturn and suggests that the UK banking system is actually very weak.

The report argues that the stress tests are fatally flawed because they use a very low ‘pass’ standard, a 4.5 percent minimum ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets. This minimum is well below those coming through under Basel III. Had the Bank carried out a test using these latter minima, the banking system would have failed the test.

If the Bank used the standards set out in Basel III, depending on the level at which the Counter Cyclical Buffer was set, at best just two (of eight) banks would pass; if the CCB had been set to its potential maximum (2.5%) to produce a more rigorous and more credible test, then every single bank would have easily failed.

The Bank also failed to carry out any tests based on a minimum ratio of capital to leverage – which is much less dependent on unreliable risk models. Even the most undemanding of such tests – one based on a minimum leverage ratio of only 3% - would have revealed that the banking system was very weak. The Bank’s failure to apply this latter test is puzzling because the Bank expects UK banks to meet this minimum standard.

Overseas experience also indicates that stress tests are useless as indicators of bank vulnerability and can go catastrophically awry. Recent stress tests failed to notice the impending collapse, not just of one but of three national banking systems: Iceland in 2008, Ireland in 2010 and Cyprus in 2013, all of which collapsed shortly after being signed off as safe by regulatory stress tests.

The BoE asks us to believe that there are no icebergs out in the banking sector, though the report argues this is merely because the Bank’s own radar fails to detect them – essentially the same radar that completely missed the last iceberg that sank the banking system in 2007-2009.

The report calls for Bank’s stress testing programme to be aborted forthwith, and calls for reformers to focus on the restoration of sound accountancy standards. It also calls for an end to regulatory risk modelling and the re-establishment of strong bank governance systems that make decision-makers personally liable for the risks they take.

The author of the report is Kevin Dowd, professor of finance and economics at Durham University and a partner in Cobden Partners based in London. He said:

The Bank's party line is that the UK banking system is safe. However, it is simply impossible to assess the health of the banking system using a stress test based on a single scenario, which is all that the Bank considers. How do we know that the banking system will be safe under all the other scenarios that the Bank of England didn't consider? Well, we don't.

On the other hand, had the Bank carried out a meaningful stress test, then all sorts of awkward questions would have arisen - such as why the banking system is still in a mess despite the vast amounts of public money that have been thrown at it since the onset of the financial crisis. But no-one - especially not the Bank - wants to face up to the point that Bank's policy towards the banking system has been a very costly failure and continues to leave the banking system vulnerable.

Notes to editors:

To access the full report “No Stress: the flaws in the Bank of England’s stress testing programme”, click here.

The Adam Smith Institute is a free market, libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.

Sam Bowman's comments on the UK's planning system feature in City AM

Deputy Director Sam Bowman's comments on the UK's planning system and housing crisis have featured in City AM:

Another suspected constraint on building is the planning system.

“The biggest supply constraints are to do with the planning system – both within London and around it. Constraints within London include density and height restrictions, and are administered at the borough level; constraints around London are primarily caused by laws that protect the Green Belt from development,” said Sam Bowman, deputy director of the Adam Smith Institute.

Read the full article here.

'Magna Carta did resist arbitrary oppression' - Dr Eamonn Butler's letter to the Daily Telegraph

Dr Eamonn Butler's letter to the Daily Telegraph:

SIR – Lord Sumption calls Magna Carta a “turgid” document that has nothing to do with our libertarian tradition. The Charter demands the re-assertion of property rights that Anglo-Saxon England enjoyed before the Norman Conquest. The limits it imposes on authority — preventing the King’s arbitrary confiscation of people’s property and freedom — guarantee those property rights. From that grows parliamentary democracy, since the rules of taxation and justice now require agreement based on debate. The “law of the land” was much older and more fundamental than king-made law: it was the common law of the Anglo-Saxons, built up by the common people over centuries. Today Britain’s common law tradition is swamped by top-down Continental law. Lord Sumption is wrong to suggest that our libertarian tradition owes more to France than to Runnymede. Eamonn Butler Director, Adam Smith Institute London SW1

Read the letter's page here.

Dr Eamonn Butler discusses new ASI monograph "The Breakfast Fallacy" on the Today Programme

Director of the Adam Smith Institute Dr Eamonn Butler spoke to BBC Radio 4's Today Programme about new Adam Smith Institute monograph "The Breakfast Fallacy: Why the Club of Rome was wrong about us running out of resources".

ASI monograph "The No Breakfast Fallacy" features in The Sun

New ASI monograph The No Breakfast Fallacy: Why the Club of Rome was wrong about us running out of resources has featured in The Sun:

The Adam Smith Institute is fighting back against claims we will freeze and starve to death if we do not switch to alternative energy and organic farming.

The free market think tank says environmentalists do not understand the oil and minerals industry, which keeps finding new sources that will be around for many thousands of years, and possibly for many millions. Tim Worstall, a rare earths expert and senior fellow, told The Sun: “We’ve got more in oil reserves than we can possibly burn without boiling Flipper.”

And on minerals, Worstall says in his report The No Breakfast Fallacy: “We are no more going to run out of usable minerals because we consume mineral reserves than we are to run out of breakfast because we eat the bacon the fridge."

The No Breakfast Fallacy: Why the Club of Rome was wrong about us running out of resources argues that outcries over resource availability from environmentalist groups are based on a misinterpretation of numbers and a misunderstanding of what mineral resources actually are.

The monograph, written by Adam Smith Institute Senior Fellow and rare earths expert Tim Worstall, says that groups that have warned about the world running out of rare mineral resources, such as The Club of Rome, have been using the wrong sets of data, mistaking the exhaustion of mineral reserves for the exhaustion of mineral resources.

Press Release: The world is not running out of resources after all, says new report

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Head of Communications Kate Andrews: kate@adamsmith.org | 07584 778207

• The world is not running out of valuable minerals; claims from environmentalist groups are based on a misunderstanding of industry terminology.
• Reserves are only a measurement of the minerals we know we can mine and make usable in the near future. Mineral reserve numbers have nothing to do with how much of the actual element can eventually be recovered.
• The reserves for minerals used in fertilizers, such as phosphate and potassium, may exhaust in the next few decades, but the exhaustion of resources is not estimated to occur until 1,000 - 7,000 years time.

The depletion of mineral reserves poses no serious threat to society, a new monograph published today by the Adam Smith Institute has concluded.

“The No Breakfast Fallacy: Why the Club of Rome was wrong about us running out of resources” argues that outcries over resource availability from environmentalist groups are based on a misinterpretation of numbers and a misunderstanding of what mineral resources actually are.

The monograph, written by Adam Smith Institute Senior Fellow and rare earths expert Tim Worstall, says that groups that have warned about the world running out of rare mineral resources, such as The Club of Rome, have been using the wrong sets of data, mistaking the exhaustion of mineral reserves for the exhaustion of mineral resources.

Mineral reserves, the monograph explains, are simply the minerals that have been prepared for use for the next few decades; they are minerals that can be mined with current technology at current prices. Some reserves are going to run out in the near future, but this is a normal process. Every generation runs out of mineral reserves.

Mineral resources, however, refer to a concentration of minerals of a certain quality and quantity that have shown reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction. These are much larger than mineral reserves.

Organic farming, for example, may be a useful idea, the monograph asserts, but the idea that it is a necessity because we’re about to run out of inorganic fertilisers is based on a falsehood. The reserves for minerals used in fertilizers may exhaust in the next few hundred years, but the exhaustion of resources is not estimated to occur for 1,400 years for phosphate and 7,300 years for potassium.

The report concludes that efforts to conserve and/or recycle mineral resources are wasteful and often end up being net harms to society, by diverting economic activity from more productive uses.

Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute and author of the report, Tim Worstall, said:

We have a basic problem in our discussion of resource availability. Which is that most of the people in that discussion are grievously misinformed about what a resource is and how much of any of them we might have. It really is true that Paul Ehrlich, Jeremy Grantham, the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth and the rest are looking at the wrong numbers when they consider how much of any mineral or metal there is that we might be able to use.

This is not some arcane economic point. It is not some mystery explained only to the illuminati. Quite simply, most people assume that mineral reserves are what we have left that we can use. This is not so: mineral reserves are only what we have prepared for us to use in the next few decades. As such, it's really no surprise at all that mineral reserves are generally recorded as being going to last for the next few years.

This book explains this simply enough that even a member of the Green Party should be able to grasp the point. We are no more going to run out of usable minerals because we consume mineral reserves than we are to run out of breakfast because we eat the bacon in the fridge.

Notes to editors:

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Kate Andrews, Head of Communications, at kate@adamsmith.org | 07584 778207.

To download “The No Breakfast Fallacy: Why the Club of Rome was wrong about us running out of resources”, click here.

The Adam Smith Institute is a free market, libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.

ASI comments on Osborne's budget surplus law feature in the Evening Standard

Director Eamonn Butler's comments on the Chancellor's budget surplus law featured in the Evening Standard:

The Right-wing Adam Smith Institute’s director Dr Eamonn Butler backed the plan. He said: “The rest of us have to live within our means, so why shouldn’t government?”

Read the full article here.