August 14, 2007

Please unshackle the markets

Sir, in a “Shake-out could help the markets” August 14 you make it clear that Central Banks should offer liquidity but not rate cuts and I fully agree, as you, based on the evidence we have seen. Central Banks are there to be there when needed but always with ever more demanding conditions and rates.

What they could also do is to suspend, until further notice, hopefully forever, that so much of the market in its investment allocations, has to heed the criteria of the credit rating agencies. Now is the time to unshackle the market and allow it to better find its own way out of the mess.

I wonder if also the Central Banks should not give a second look at those minimum capital requirements that the Basel banking regulating community has imposed on the commercial banks. I mean from yesterday to today it is not like the banks have become more risky, it is more that they are discovering how risky they really were, and so the Central Banks should perhaps help to ease that tragic moment of realization.