Tea with FT

Having been an Executive Director of the World Bank I know that the columnists of the Financial Times have more voice than what we ever had, and therefore they also need some checks-and-balances.

Currently though, I have been declared a persona non grata by its editor.

Would the child who shouted out “the Emperor is naked” have his observation published in FT? Does the child need a PhD for that?

For more on the how-come and the whats'up see "A Blog is Born" at the very bottom.

Would a private bank depositor insurer allowed the European banks to do what they did? No? So?

Again, we would do better with capital requirements for banks based on sustainability of earth and job creation ratings

We need to see the hiding-behind-regulatory-risk-weighting index of the banks

Was the Basel Committee, and the Financial Stability Board, created in order to bypass democracies?

Regulators, and FT journalists, suffer from cognitive overload and malfunctioning prefrontal cortex.

Since when can a mistake in a paper be used as evidence of an opposite conclusion?

Higher bank capital ratios without eliminating distortions based on perceived risks, would make banks riskier

Without eliminating regulatory distortions, neither austerity nor profligacy can help Europe

It was bank regulators who suffered the mother of all intellectual failures

I did not take Simon Kuper for a baby-boomer.

The best way to compete with tax havens and fiscal paradises abroad is to create tax heavens and paradises at home.

FT, how can you learn if you do not want to listen?

Bank regulators make the prospects of the living-hand-to-mouth especially bleak

Distortion is not free, current low public interest rates are an illusion and could be the highest real rates ever

On the Battle between “Austerians” and “Profligarians”

Risk-weighting for risks already weighted for, well that is regulatory zealotry you can write home about

The only acceptable antidote against tax-havens should be tax-heavens

Bank rules already hinder inclusion and widen the gap

More than the public borrowing rate trapped at zero, it is the banks that are trapped into public lending

Regulators, you can even let Libor be the result of a raffle, but please stop distorting and subsidizing the risk-free rate

Europe what you really need is much less risk-taking austerity

But also beware of the much greater risk derived from excessive lack of testosterone and dopamine

Martin Wolf, monetary profligacy should not be an article of faith either

With respect to increased capital requirements for banks, what matters most for growth and stability is how it is required.

Capital requirements for banks based on perceived risks… talk about faith in a flimsy theory

FT, you urgently need to unclog your own thinking process.

Banks should make their profits by being real banks not simply by leveraging what is “absolutely safe”

Chris Giles, can we have a little more respect for the “risky” small businesses please?

Margaret Thatcher, if explained the capital requirements for banks based on perceived risk would ask “Are you nuts? Accept defeat?

But bankers still have to dance to the same lousy music still being played

Much more important than guaranteeing sufficient capital, is that bank capital requirements do not distort.

More than protecting banks from future crisis, we need to protect our real economy from dysfunctional banks

FT, what Europe needs is to stop regulators discriminating against the backbone of its economy

The ECB, to fix southern Europe, and to not mess up the rest more, might need to fire Mario Draghi.

Regulators did not trust the market and imposed their own judgments on the banks.

The world (Japan) does not need inflationary expectations it urgently needs more rational bank regulations

Current capital requirements for banks represent, for the risky real economy, the biggest source of deflationary bias.

Mr. Barney Frank, when will you help stop that odious and stupid regulatory discrimination against “The Risky”?

Bank regulators, by entitling “The Infallible”, are not behaving like good citizens, and neither is FT

There might be many reasons for wanting to feminize banks but, if it is to reduce risk-taking, then down we go!

We should not go from “pseudoscientific calculation of risk-weighted assets” to Talibanesque capital requirements

Current financial fragmentation is not a “north vs. south”, but an “infallible vs. risky” issue

Fat chance Mario Draghi and ECB will be able to help “The Risky”

To temporarily lower the capital requirements for all banks on “risky” assets, as a first step, goes in a better direction.

The Basel Committee’s capital controls, caused the capital controls in Cyprus

The world does not need reckless bankers but neither does it need risk adverse bank regulating nannies

FT, your statement on Cyprus is a disgrace and an insult to our intelligence

If it looks like a distortion, quacks like a distortion, and walks like a distortion then it probably is a distortion.

Does Gillian Tett suffer from blind faith in the experts?

The first step needed to stop global finance and local economies from disintegrating.

Is this a bad joke?

Europe, ask your bank regulators to explain why they did it, and you will not get an answer. They never knew!

More important than how accurate credit ratings are, is how these are used.