In reality Oliver Stone is Mr. Conformist.

Sir in “When Hugo met Oliver”, June 19, Matthew Garrahan refers to Oliver Stone as a non-conformist. Since “conformism” is a term used to describe the suspension of an individual's self-determined actions or opinions in favour of obedience to the mandates or conventions of one's peer-group that is plainly laughable. Oliver Stone, with respect to the beliefs extolled in his particular mutual admiration club, is as conformist as anyone could be.

If I had the chance I would warmly suggest Mr. Stone to read Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at noon”, as it could be an eye-opener for him. But, then again why would he want an eye-opener when the living on the fast moving and trendy oil blessed left jet set is so enjoyable and profitable?

Bank regulators need a better understanding of risk

Sir Martin Wolf holds that “The world economy has no easy way out of the mire” February 24. Who could argue with that... except perhaps in terms of it being an understatement.

Wolf holds that, ceteris paribus, we will not get out of the crisis unharmed and that either through a bigger financial crisis in the future or the “the fiscal rope” running out we will ultimately have a “sovereign debt crisis”. No doubt he is right. And as the only possibility for avoiding collapse he argues, quite correct again, having the world to grow out of its debt overhang.

But what I have not been able to convince Martin Wolf about, no matter hundreds of letters is that to grow out of the debt overhang we need a completely different paradigm with respect of how we regulate our banks. The current one, based exclusively on risk-avoidance, will not take us anywhere and on the contrary will just help to reinforce the dangerous fairytales that there are enough safe-havens and AAAs to go around for all, and that it is in safe havens you can generate real growth.

Martin Wolf quotes William White former chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements referencing “the explosion of the balance sheet of the financial sector and increase in its exposure to risk” as one of the imbalances that led to this crisis.

If our bank regulators were more capable of performing what Arthur Koestler labelled as bisociation they would have long ago discovered the irony in that the explosion of the balance sheet and the exposure to risk that occurred and failed was almost all in supposedly risk-free AAA rated operations.

The growth of global finance is not that free or muscular.

Sir, all you say in “Why finance will not be unfettered” June 25, might be indeed be right but nevertheless you say it wrong. Yes the market has grown tremendously but if you truly believe that this has more to do with “seeking out pockets of undervaluation” than the exploitation of new instruments for temporary overvaluation, you are a true optimist. Unfortunately when the marking to the market of today’s almost incestually benign models and conditions need to be marked to the markets of the future, and we begin discovering where the risks have been hiding out, will probably find a lot of fat and very little muscular tissue in the growth. And to talk about “liberation of finance” and “unchained financial capitalism” when you have forcibly chained so much of the market to the opinions of some very few credit rating agencies reminds me of when Arthur Koestler describes how he as a young and utterly illusioned student, was able to see freedom in the communist Soviet.