Is the Basel Committee´s mistake a taboo in FT?

Sir, Aline van Duyn and Nicole Bullock report “Banks braced for knock-on effect of credit ratings” April 29. There, and though they refer to issues such like that the ratings of the banks could suffer because of the close relation with the risks of their respective sovereign, and of outright losses if selling sovereign debt at a loss, amazingly they do not say one single word about the increase in capital requirements for the banks those downgrading in the credit cause, retroactively.

All bad that can happen when lenders have followed high credit ratings and these are suddenly downgraded, are currently compounded by the fact that the regulators use exactly the same credit ratings when establishing the capital requirements for banks. This was the biggest mistake of the Basel Committee, and of which I have written to you countless times. Has it now even become a taboo to discuss that in FT?