Recognizing you don’t either have a clue is a good place to start

Sir in your “Dangerous animals in the banking zoo” February 23 you suggest that the banks need traders with trading mentality in order to supervise the traders. This might indeed help to reduce some operational risks but, unless you have managed to tame those supervising traders into non-trader bankers the question then becomes who will supervise them.

Exactly the same fundamental approach as you are suggesting led the regulators to appoint the credit rating agencies as the knowledgeable risk overseers and see how far that has taken us. The credit rating agencies have now become themselves our largest systemic risk creator running around correcting their mistakes, downgrading here and there and placing ultimatums like “raise your capital in 48 hours or I will downgrade you”.

No, why do we not try something of the old traditional sensible stuff like not getting involved in something we do not fully understand and place through the banks professionals with sufficient moral standing to admit to that fact when it is true.

Come to think about it why does not FT give a good example and spell out that it does not understand it at all either, before suggesting we dig ourselves deeper in a trading hole.