The problem is that regulators, behind our backs, empowered an AAArisktocracy to have special access to bank credit.

If we tax and redistribute all wealth, what shall we do the morning after the party? That question, which could be asked to Piketty, is similar in nature to the question we could make to John Plender, “The corporate aristocracy holding out against fiscal revolution” March 3.

Mr. Plender After getting rid of all that corporate cash by paying dividends, by paying taxes or by building private bridges to nowhere, then what?

Also, all that cash is not just forgotten cash lying under a mattress. Plender himself even mentions that “the corporate sector… in several big economies… now acts as a net lender to governments” which means, that the government already uses those funds, perhaps even paying negative interest rates on these.

Current regulations do not allow bank credit to flow in a fair way to those “smaller companies, which innovate and create jobs”, only because they are perceived as “risky”. That is why the liquidity coming from QEs is trapped, and blows bubbles around already existing assets. But Plender, like many others, just does not want to see this…I wonder why?

What “corporate aristocracy”, what we have is an AAArisktocracy that has been appointed by regulators as those who really merit bank credit.

PS. I have for many years argued that when corporations pay taxes, they dilute the citizens’ tax representation. And that is why when Plender writes that in the US corporate taxes were down to 1.6 percent by 2013, my first impulse would be, bring it down to zero now and save yourselves a lot of expensive economic and political distortions.

PS. Also, as a shareholder, in these times of possible extreme volatility, I do not like to hold shares in any company that has not hoarded ample reserves of cash… to fend off threats or to capitalize on opportunities

The assistance by tech jerks could increase the Piketty inequalities.

Sir, Tim Harford defends the apps for obtaining a “reservation at a popular restaurant… something that have always been valuable but they have been hard to buy and sell” arguing that “none of the people hoping to secure a reservation at a Michelin-starred restaurant is poverty stricken”, “Lessons from tech jerks”, July 26.

Yes indeed but let us not forget that even the one-percenters or less, have to compete for the one-percenters-of-the-one-percenters, and as this new service will extract a higher price, we are again confronting a service that mostly benefits the plutocracy. In fact they will probably pay less for this reservation service that what they currently pay the concierge of the hotel where they reside… and so this can only help to drive up even more the Piketty-inequalities we are told to abhor.

Now on the positive side… when these Michelin-starred restaurants run their own auctioning of reservation system… perhaps they find it profitable to open up for instance early morning shifts… and then some non-plutocrat gourmets and gourmands like me could perhaps have a better chance of finding a seat… and hopefully the real chefs will then perform especially well for their real admirers.

But while, we are on the subject of jerks, let me again remind you that the worst ones are the bank regulators who discriminate against the fair access to bank credit of those who, because they are perceived as risky, are already being discriminated against… the #JerkRegulator