What good work?

Sir Emilio Botín opines “Now we must build on Basel´s good work” September 16, as if the Basel Committee has done us any good. It undoubtedly created the current crisis by setting up a system of risk-weights for capital requirements that brought much confusion to the major financial markets.

When also reading Botín complaining about the possibilities of being discriminated against by levying additional capital requirements on the “too-big-to-fail” banks, one cannot but think of all the small businesses and entrepreneurs who have been unfairly discriminated by Basel, just because they cannot hustle up the triple-A ratings that would allow the banks to hold negligible capital requirements when lending to them.

Why is it so easy for big-bank-bankers to get a voice in the Financial Times but so hard for the small businesses and entrepreneurs who the banker´s should prioritize their lending to? FT´s “without favour” sometimes does just not ring true.