If you want to fight short-termism, you have a better chance doing so by appointing teenagers instead of workers to the boards.

Sir, Prof Louis Brennan welcomes Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act proposal that “requires companies with more than £1bn in annual revenues” that which would require the largest corporations to allow workers to choose 40 percent of their board seats … “a welcome counterforce to the inherent logic in shareholder value that necessarily results in short-term decision-making”, “Humans will do things for which they are rewarded”, August 31.

In that respect I don’t understand why workers would be lesser humans and not so only do things for which they are rewarded. If you want to have a better chance for adding some long term views why not appoint some savvy teenagers to the board. They are the ones who have to live the longest with their decisions, and they are who probably are by means of social media those most held accountable to their peers.

If Senator Warren is really serious about fighting short termism, and is not only engaging in some redistribution profiteering, then she should be up in arms against the regulators’ risk weighted capital requirements for banks. These subsidize the access to bank credit of the safer present, and impose tariffs on the riskier future.

@PerKurowski

A “lack of accountability” worthy of the Guinness Book of Records

Sir, Louis Brennan refers to Peter Doyle's letter highlighting the “unprecedented scale” of the IMF’s forecasting error in relation to its 2010 programme for Greece, in order to argue for “reform of institutions such as the IMF and the ECBm so that an ethos of transparency and accountability obtains in their operations and decision-making.”

Though forecasting errors are usually seen in the rear window, and though IMF sits in the uncomfortable position of at times influencing so much so as to make their forecasts come true, damn if you’re right, damn if you’re wrong, no one can deny Brennan has a valid point.

But, in terms of lack of accountability, that is really peccata minuta when compared to that of the Basel Committee’s. Let me just describe it this way. Neither Hollywood nor Bollywood would ever dream of placing the responsibility for the production of a Basel III, in the same hands of those who produced that incredible box-office flop that was Basel II.

But there they are, with some of their players, like Mario Draghi and Jaime Caruana, having even promoted. It should apply to the Guinness book of records.

PS. In the case of IMF, and as it there had a much more active role, I regard Argentina as a much worse mistake than Greece