For the banks to stay out of the shadows, their regulators must not hide in the shadows, or hide the sun.

Sir, in your “Banking must stay out of the shadows” June 21, you hold that “Regulators are better equipped institutionally to monitor risks and respond when threats arise”.

Sorry, the Financial Times, which has such a clear role to play as a critical observer, should never be allowed to make such a categorical statement.

The truth is that regulators are just as well capable of making everything so much worse, by means of how they monitor and respond to threats.

For instance current risk-weighted capital requirements for banks, is the consequence of regulators responding to their own monsters, with little considerations of what monsters could be dangerous for the banks; and so, by distorting the allocation of bank credit, their regulations turned into the real threat.

Could it really be that all you at FT fear the regulators so much you do not even dare to ask them… where they have found the causality between a borrower being ex ante perceived as risky, from a creditworthiness point of view, and a bank failing?”

Or is it that you are all ideologically programmed to favor regulators?

Yes, you do accept that “regulators must beware of creating new fragilities”, but that seems more like a simple salute of the flag, when you then write that “the authorities have done much to re-regulate banks”. That is not true … any re-regulation worthy of its name must begin with a full understanding of what went wrong… and that the regulators have until now refused to do… just as you at FT have refused to holding them accountable to do so.