With respect to the UK housing boom FT has not earned the right to criticize much.

Sir, you express a lot of concern over excessive financing of houses, like the Help to Buy scheme, “Carney and the UK housing boom” May 15.

But you never express concern about the sad fact that if a bank lends to a small business or an entrepreneur, those who could help create the jobs by which house owners could pay their bills, then it needs to hold much more equity than when financing the purchase of a house.

And this of course means banks make much higher risk-adjusted returns financing houses than financing jobs… which is pure lunacy… and that of course means immensely more subsidizing of houses than the Help to Buy could ever aspire to signify.

And so with respect to this I consider that FT has not really earned the right to criticize that much.

Mr. Kay. It is necessary to place bets that risk bankruptcy so as to have a chance to avoid bankruptcy.

Sir I refer to John Kay’s “Is it better to play it safe or to place bets that risk bankruptcy?” December 11.

In it Kay asks “Did mothers warn their daughters that marriage to brave hunters might end in widowhood, or urge them to seek husbands who would enable them to breed well-fed grandchildren?” That would in any case all be a matter of individual decisions. But, if there was a council of mothers which decided they had all to be extraordinarily nice to the sons in laws who stayed safely home and pester badly those who dared go hunting that society would definitely not prosper.

As cannot prosper an economy or a society where banks are given the incentive by their regulators to obtain much much higher risk adjusted returns on equity on assets perceived as “absolutely safe” than on assets perceived as “risky”.

And so the answer to Kay’s title question is that it is necessary to place bets that risk bankruptcy so as to have a chance to avoid bankruptcy.

The Help to Buy scheme, has also something of a Help to Sell Expensively flair about it.

Sir, Janan Ganesh opines that “Britain’s flawed Help to Buy scheme is smart politics”, November 12. And this because it allows the Tories, to “connect with the many young to middle age voters priced out of the housing market”.

Yeah, yeah, that is as long as no one informs those many young to middle age voters that they are priced out of the housing market, precisely because of this type of assistance.

Was the government not helping or hindering with permits the housing market in any way, houses could actually be quite affordable. As is, it looks more like a diabolical design to help aging baby boomers get rid of assets, at great prices, sticking those to the generations after them.