Long live the Balkanization of criteria!

Sir "Davos call for end to fragmented financial regulation" is a first page story on you January 26 issue since Malcolm Knight the chief executive of the Bank for International Settlements complained about "the Balkanisation of regulation". Mr Knight might have a point, but, long before that discussion, we need to fully deal with the issue that the detonator for the current crisis was his institution's empowerment of some few credit rating agencies and their methodologies; and which resulted in giving the subprime-mortgages backed securities the wings to fly all over. From this perspective, a Balkanisation of criteria is also urgently called for. 

Yes of course, put some order in the house, nothing wrong with that, but, please, not by trusting some governess ordering your children telling around. Haven't you seen what monsters you have contracted? "Put up a couple of billions before next week or I down-rate you!" (Where is Maria?...The children need her!)

PS. In a statement delivered as an Executive Director at the World Bank on April 3, 2003 I wrote: "A mixture of thousand solutions, many of them inadequate, may lead to a flexible world that can bend with the storms. A world obsessed with Best Practices may calcify its structure and break with any small wind."