The central planners´ vendetta.

Sir Chrystia Freeland in her "Fixing the flaw", December 31 proposes as one cause of the current crisis that “perhaps the total discrediting of central planning was one reason the champions of the market developed such an infallibility of their own system”. May I suggest an alternative take, namely that the humiliated central planners decided to avenge their defeat by surreptitiously entering into the reign of the Basel Committee and fouling up capitalism by convincing the bank regulators to empower the credit rating agencies as their commissars of risks. The trick they used was to sell the idea that since the credit rating agencies were private they were true representatives of the market.

Of course, as had to happen with any central planning initiative, sooner or later, the credit rating agencies put up their triple-A signs pointing into the wrong direction and led the world over the precipice of the lousily awarded mortgages to the subprime sector. The central planners are currently laughing their heart out. Boy, what a vendetta!