The Basel Committee blocks Machievelli´s historical fortunas, while making our mis-fortunas worse.

Sir, Timothy Garton Ash makes reference to “!historical luck, the fortuna that Niccolὸ Machiavelli calls the arbiter of half of the things we do” "States are born by accident but sustained by ardour”, March 8.

That applies directly to what I have in vain been trying to explain to FT for so many years now about what is wrong with current bank regulations.

Capital requirements which allow banks to earn higher risk-adjusted returns on equity when lending to the “safe” than when lending to the “risky”, effectively blocks the access of bank credit to the fortunas the real economy needs to grow and remain sturdy, while at the same time guaranteeing that if a huge mis-fortuna happens, like when an “absolutely safe” suddenly turns out very risky, banks will not have the capital to defend themselves with.

I am sure future historians will write about the period when the Basel Committee castrated our banks and with that our economies, and the elite like the Financial Times kept mum about it.

God make us daring!