Should not Basel II bank regulations have been piloted before applied globally?

Sir, I refer to Tim Harford’s “Why pilot schemes help ideas take flight” October 19.

Let us not forget though that the most important role of pilot schemes is to help us from allowing crazy ideas that might take us down from flying.

For instance, can you imagine what sufferings the world would have saved itself from had the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision done a pilot on Basel II? Then it would have seen only a couple of banks, and not the whole banking system, exposing themselves dangerously much to what is perceived as “absolutely safe”, and dangerously little to what is perceived as “risky”? Then they would have understood, earlier, how stupid this whole idea was.