Those at the nucleus may not even know they´re there.

Sir, John Kay writes that “Those at the nucleus may not have the best view” February 2. Indeed, but that is so much worse, when those at the nucleus are not even conscious they´re there.

For instance the Basel Committee which with such hubris took upon itself to act like the risk-managers of the world, assigning the risk-weights that determines how much capital the banks need to hold for different assets, according to their credit ratings, is not even aware of that by doing so it determined Ground Zero for other risk-managers; and continue therefore to complain about the ability of bankers.

Our future is (hopefully) not this!

Sir, Martin Wolf titles his article assessing the financial crisis “How the crisis catapulted us into the future” February 2. I am not so sure of that since it seems that in many important aspects, our past has just catch up on us, and we´re still stuck in it. Let me explain.

This crisis was caused by regulators, who with hubris took upon themselves to play the role as the supreme risk-manager of the world, and created an unstable ground zero for the rest of risk-managers, by authorizing for instance banks to leverage over 60 times their capital, just because a triple-A rating was involved.

Prominent names, like Martin Wolf, have not yet even begun to question the wisdom of that… and surely (hopefully) our future should have no room for such regulatory meddling and distortion of the markets.

For markets to work the regulator needs to act as a regulator and not as a risk-manager

Sir, “Time finally to make banks safe” you correctly write on February 1, yet you fail to understand that for market discipline to be restored, it is imperative that regulators keep their hands out of the markets, instead of, with their capital requirements for banks based on perceived risk of default and as risk-weighted by the regulator, acting with incredible hubris as the self appointed risk-manager of the world.

In other words you can order whatever basic capital requirement you want for banks… 9 percent or 100 percent… but that will not mean anything if you then water down some of these capital requirements by applying minuscule risk-weights. In fact the higher the basic capital requirements for banks are, the higher will the distortions produced by different risk-weights be.

The regulators set “Ground Zero” for most of the risk management of banks… and we need that “Ground Zero” not to be a distorted reflection of their arbitrary and regressive regulatory risk-adverse bias.

Ps. Truly I do not understand what little Per Kurowski might have done to FT, for FT to decide they prefer to shut him up, before having his opinions heard.