Why does the Financial Times ignore the only legitimate children of the latest interventions?

Sir “In praise of free markets” September 27, you do not even mention that the financial markets are not free at all since they have to follow or are induced to follow the criteria of a few credit rating agencies that for all practical purposes are just outsourced government agents.

Also saying that “subprime mortgages grew because the subprime mortgage sector was dominated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” blithely ignores the fact that it is indeed possible to provide the subprime sector with excellent mortgages, and which has been done for many decades, and hides the truth that what went wrong was that extremely lousy awarded mortgages were given wings to travel all over the globe because the credit rating agencies blessed them with their AAA.

You talk of the “child of other interventions” but you do not even mention the only two formally recognized legitimate children of the latest interventions and that are present in the current regulations from Basel namely the minimum capital requirements imposed on the banks based on a vaguely defined concept of risk and, of course the use of the credit rating agencies.

Why does the Financial Times ignore these children? Are you not free?