Though there are free-kicks in football most time the ball is in a much confused play.

Sir, John Kay in “Don´t expect the markets to bend it like Beckham” December 29, correctly points out that in the market it is not really the expertise of the expert that counts but the interaction of the experts, and I would say the myriad of non-experts often believing themselves experts.

This is precisely what the Basel Committee completely ignored when they calibrated the capital requirements based on risk of defaults. They appointed as their experts the credit rating agencies but completely forgot that what really imported were not the ratings as such but the way banks would respond to such ratings and to the resulting capital requirements… in the midst of a confused game.