Unfortunately, the fact that something is correctly stated does not suffice for it to be correctly understood

Sir, John Authers writes “Risk is greatest when there is no perception of risk” March 3. Indeed that is what I have written to you and to Authers innumerable letters over the years. Those perceived as “absolutely safe” are those who pose the largest possibility of dangerous unexpected losses.

And yet, nailing the truth, and even holding that “regulation can easily be counterproductive”, Authers’ still seems incapable, or not wanting, to extract the most important lesson from it.

That lesson is of course that current risk based capital requirements for banks, those based on the perceptions about the risks of expected losses make absolutely no sense at all.

The strange inability to infer the right conclusions from the right facts is also made very clear by how Authers’ ends his article. There he holds that the cure for “the greatest risks come from those things that have no history of problems, and which are not perceived as high risk” is additional “research [in this case] into fund manager’s systemic risks”… and that, Sir, is proposing to dig us even deeper in the hole he now knows we’re in.

If fighting groupthink, start with the worst, with bank regulators, Basel Committee and Financial Stability Board

Sir John Authers asks and answers “Can globalized capital markets coexist with democracy and the nation state? It is reasonable now to fear the answer is “no”, and that means reforming the investment industry should be a far higher priority”, “Fund management reform will help avert groupthink” November 25.

I have no idea why Authers goes after the fund management’s groupthink first and not after bank regulators’ groupthink which has been so much more perverse.

Let me just ask:

What kind of smartass idea is it to require banks to hold capital based on the same ex ante perceived risks which have already been cleared for by markets and banks by means of interest rates, size of exposure and other terms? Could the group of regulators not figure out this dooms the banks to overdose on perceived risks and the risk-price equation to go haywire?

And what democracy approved that for instance a bank in Spain needed to hold 8 percent in capital when lending to a Spanish medium or small business, entrepreneur or startup but could lend, for instance to the government of France, holding zero capital?

No! Globalized market cannot coexist with the dumb groupthink produced by that small mutual admiration club comprised by the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board.