If we want debt to earn the credit it merits, we need to get rid of current bank regulators.

Sir, I refer to Nigel Dodd’s, a professor at LSE, “Cast aside the moral judgment and give debt the credit it deserves”, November 1.

Unfortunately it seems that professor Dodd has not heard about the arguments against odious and stupid bank regulatory discrimination based on perceived credit risks. Had he done so, I believe his article would have taken a different form.

I say this, especially when reading his conclusion: “Credit is morally neutral. As an institution, it is neither good nor bad; and it is a grievous error to confuse creditworthiness with moral probity. Credit should be available to those who need it most. The price should be reasonable, and it should entail neither stigma nor penury.”

Indeed, professor Dodd, but one of the most important reasons for why this is not so, is the bank regulations that have been in place for about three decades; most especially since Basel II was approved in June 2004.

Those regulations order the banks to hold much more equity when lending to those perceived as “safe” than when lending to those perceived as “risky”; which of course allows banks to earn much higher risk-adjusted returns on equity when lending to the safe, than when lending to the risky.

And that means that regulators, on their own, without our approval, decided that bank credit should primarily be available to what from a credit risk point of view was perceived as “safe”, like financing house purchases, or lending to “the infallible sovereigns” or to the members of the AAAristocracy.

And which also means that anyone perceived as “risky”, would have to pay even more risk premiums, or have even less access to bank credit.

And that means denying fair access to bank credit to those we, who depend the most on the real economy, most need and want should have fair access to it, like the medium and small businesses, the entrepreneurs and the start-ups.

If we want debt to get the credit it deserves, we need to get rid of these regulators.