If only the UK was rated BB+ to B-…

Then a UK small business would be able to compete with the government on equal grounds for bank credit, because only then would the bank have to post the same capital for both.

The nannies in the Basel Committee decided to hand out, through very low capital requirements for banks, generous incentives for these to go and play in “safe” places, even though, as regulators, they should have known that financial and bank crisis only occur where the perceived safety attracts the excessive volumes that pose a risk for the system… swamp land with alligators might now and again eat up a citizen, but never pose a threat to a nation.

But on top of it all, the Basel nannies also turned out to be communists in disguise, as they ordained that if a bank gave loans to a sovereign rated AAA by their risk kommissars then the bank needed no capital at all… and what small business can compete with that?

More than two years after the crisis started we read in a report by Brooke Masters and Patrick Jenkins that Lord Turner is now announcing tougher bank capital regime. But since he, like Basel III, does not mention a review of the arbitrary and regressive risk-weights that were the real causes of the disaster, we can only conclude he is not really fit to be a regulator, at least not in war time.