October 02, 2012

No! Petit bank regulatory bureaucrats, Financial Times´s friends, are those most to blame for Europe´s crisis.

Sir, Gideon Rachman springs upon us, I do not understand why, that the real culprits of Europe´s crisis are Valėry Giscard d´Estaing, Helmut Kohl and Jacques Delors, “Blame the great men´s vision for Europe´s crisis”, October 2. 

But I am absolutely certain that if anyone had asked those men whether we needed to create huge incentives so that the banks concentrated doing business with what was officially perceived as “absolutely not risky” and stayed away, like if it was the pest, from lending to what was officially perceived as “risky”; and banks would therefore be allowed to lend to Greece holding only 1.6 percent in equity, while when lending to European small business or entrepreneur they needed to hold 8 percent, I am sure their answer would have been…”have you´ve gone absolutely mad?” 

No, that kind of regulatory lunacy, which allowed the eurozone disequilibria become financed way beyond reason, was clearly the responsibility of others, like, for instance, Mario Draghi. 

Of course I do not believe in an “Anglo-Saxon” conspiracy to destroy the euro, that is silly, but, can you really hold it against me if I am getting close to believing in a much more modest Financial Times' conspiracy to shut up the truth about how regulators failed us, in order to protect some of its friends. As evidence of it I could offer how the Financial Times has basically so completely ignored my soon over 800 letters written to FT over many years on this issue, and my very simple and reasonable questions. By the way, I also dare here Gideon Rachman to have a go at responding these.