March 11, 2013

FT, are you allergic to “The Risky”, or just sucking up to “The Infallible”?

Sir, in “Britain needs an activist chancellor” March 11, you so correctly state: “Mr. Osborne should shift more resources from inefficient subsidies to uses that can provide a greater stimulus to the economy… [and that] smaller companies are being squeezed by the low availability of bank credit”

And is there any more inefficient subsidy than helping those bank borrowers perceived as “absolutely safe” to get even better terms, at the cost of making access to bank credit more difficult and more expensive for those borrowers perceived as “risky”, like for all those smaller companies you refer to?

Sir, I cannot understand why you insist on keeping silence on this extremely serious issue that is distorting the common sense out of our markets. Is it that you are allergic to “The Risky” or just that you prefer sucking up to “The Infallible”?

There is a need for building up bank capital for all their lending, especially for that lending to “The Risky” which required too little capital. But, temporarily lowering the specific capital requirements for banks when lending to “The Risky”, would be very helpful for the economy, and at no cost to the public sector, since the dangers of excessive bank lending to what is perceived as risky are really minor.