It behooves EU technocrats to find out what Europeans want and do not want to come out of Brexit.

Sir, Karin Kneissl, even by daring to explain some historical reasons for why Britain might not really belong in EU, makes a firm and clear call, to all the parties directly involved in the Brexit negotiations, to come back to their common senses. “A pragmatic approach to Brexit will pay off for both sides” August 10.

Hopefully it will give those many in Britain (including some in FT) who seem to want Brexit to fail, big, so that they can say their “We told you so”, some reason to recapacitate. Of course many of them, just like many Trump enemies in the US, are beyond the point where they would be able to do so.

If Karin Kneissl wants to help even more she should give Mr. Negotiator Barnier a call, and remind him that it behooves him, and all other EU technocrats, to find out what Europeans want and do not want to come out of Brexit. That this has not been done is sincerely amazing and only points to way too much besserwisser arrogance playing a role.

And Sir, if Brexit fails big, it is not certain at all that the loudest protesters would be British. Among Europeans, Britain counts with much more sympathy than what all commissioners, whose egos were hurt with Brexit, think it has. A French finding it harder to visit London is just as likely to be upset than a Brit finding it harder to visit Paris… perhaps even more “Mon Dieu, que dirait de Gaulle?”

@PerKurowski

Museum of Louvre should invite French to celebrate their Monument to Inequality, and tourists to take selfies

Sir, Jo Ellison writes: In January, Jean-Luc Martinez, head of the Louvre, reported a decline of about 2m visitors to the glass pyramid on the Rue de Rivoli, and a loss in revenues of €9.7m. He blamed the attacks as being key… The hotel sector has seen a simple decline: many have reported occupancy rates plummeting by up to 40 per cent. “A night at the museum: Louis Vuitton goes to the Louvre, as Nicolas Ghesquière’s AW17 collection celebrates ‘brand Paris’” March 9.

I sat down with my daughter Alexandra, an art consultant with a M.A. from Christie's Education in Modern and Contemporary Art and the Market, to discuss Louvre’s really horrific decline in visitors. We came to the following (quite preliminary) conclusions.

First that it might be Louvre have catered too much to the tourist and in the process forgotten their nationals. There I suggested an invitation to Thomas Piketty and all his fellow countrymen to come and celebrate more often that great Monument to Inequality that The Museum of Louvre represents. (I am not entirely sure Alexandra was 100% with me on that one… perhaps only 99%  J  )

Also, since the drop in hotel occupancy rates might have also to do with competition from Airbnb, it could result in tourists not feeling as tourists as usual and therefore not behaving as much as tourists, meaning among other, going less to museums. In order to combat this perhaps the Louvre must launch a campaign declaring anyone who has not taken a selfie at the Louvre as not really having been in Paris.

The origins of the selfie is to be found at Louvre

@PerKurowski

COP21: Bank capital requirements based on sustainability and job-creating ratings would have been a major step forward

Sir, Martin Wolf commenting on the Paris COP21 agreement on limiting the risks of climate change writes “The provision of needed finance is an aspiration, not a bankable commitment” “One small step forward for humankind” December 16.

Indeed, sadly the agreement missed something I have been proposing for quite some time.

Our banks, one of our most important agents to bring us forward, have been told by their regulators that if they hold assets perceived as safe from a credit point of view, they will be allowed to leverage their equity and the support they receive from society much more than if they hold assets perceived as risky.

Since bankers with interest rates and size of exposures already clear for credit risks, it is quite nutty to require that perceived risk to be cleared for again in the capital.

The net result of it is permitting banks to earn higher risk adjusted returns on equity when financing the safe than when financing the risky. And expected credit risk is an expected credit risk that should be managed by the banks if they want to stay open, and has not one iota to do with whether a borrower has something that is worthy to be financed.

In general terms, and since it requires hubris, I am opposed to any type of distortion of bank credit allocation to the real economy. But, if I had to distort, I would only do that in pursuit of a good purpose, like helping the sustainability of our planet and creating jobs for our youth.

I am absolutely sure that if COP21, in Paris, had come up with an agreement that instructed bank regulators to forget credit ratings and use sustainability and job creation ratings to set the capital requirements for banks instead – more sustainability and more job creation less equity and therefore higher ROE - then Wolf could have written about “A major step forward for humankind”

Of course that would have required explaining how purposeless and useless current bank regulations are, and there are many who do not want that to be understood. Regulators because they might be held accountable, bankers because that would signify having to give up a dream come true, making their big profits on what they think (or can make out to be) safe.

@PerKurowski ©

COP21 Paris, do not let a divisive rich-poor political discourse take over the climate change debate, like in Copenhagen.

Sir, Narendra Modi is walking on a very fine and dangerous line between the “it is all humans’ obligation to encounter any global threat that could result from affecting the environment of our planet” and it is the responsibility of the rich. “Do not let the lifestyles of the rich world deny the dreams of the rest” November 30.

Of course, when it comes to assigning financial resources to mitigate or combat climate change, the rich countries have more to give. But I would always hold that the starting point of all these efforts must be that the poor and the rich, as humans, have an equal right to participate in fighting anything that threatens humanity… and that the right and duties of the poor are not lesser because they are poor.

Let not a divisive rich-poor political discourse take over the climate change debate, like in Copenhagen.

PS. Narendra Modi would benefit from understanding that bank regulators' credit risk aversion is much worse for the opportunities of India to develop than any coal aversion by self appointed climate change regulators.

PS. You want to see some real anti-climate change action? Throw out credit risk capital requirements for banks and adopt SDG weighted capital requirements for banks.

PS. And a renewed warning. If anything like a Basel Committee for Banking Supervision takes over the worldwide regulation on climate change… we are toast.

@PerKurowski ©

Perhaps Paris should have a little tête-à-tête with Volkswagen about what to do about embarrassing pollution ratings.

Sir, Adam Thomson discusses the embarrassment to Paris its lousy environmental readings could cause when, for a UN conference in November, “some 40,000 politicians, delegates, scientists and environment experts will descend on Paris to discuss what is billed by many as humanity’s last hope of saving the planet from irreversible climate change”. “Dark and dirty days in the city of light” September 23.

Perhaps Paris should have a little tête-à-tête with Volkswagen to see if it has any ideas about what could be done.

Or, in these days when Volkswagen has so utterly destroyed the credibility of emission controllers, Paris could perhaps just discreetly let out something like: “Our emission readings are sincere”

Oops… should those who have responsibility for supporting tourism in big cities also need to have tête-à-têtes with App developers like Plume?

http://ourpiedaterre.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-vw-volkswagen-emission-control.html

@PerKurowski

We must help people to go where they feel they belong… alive

Sir Christopher Caldwell in “Rioters vs state in a test of will” December 1, quotes the Socialist leader Malek Boutih saying “they are whole populations here that don’t feel they belong to this country” and informs that the bodies of the dead boys “will be flown to Morocco and Senegal, respectively, for burial”, which leaves us all with the question of why could they not have been flown there alive?

The poor in developing countries frequently face no other choice than to emigrate to richer countries in order to survive physically but many alienated and frustrated citizens of developed countries do not really have the choice to emigrate somewhere else in order to survive emotionally, and perhaps they should have.

For instance if these dead boys had had the option of selling whatever French citizen’s rights they had to a foreigner truly interested in coming to France and with that money could have financed their resettlement to Morocco or Senegal perhaps we could have solved the problems on two fronts.

Clearly it is not as easy as that but the world needs to find new and different ways to fight violence originated from deep sentiments of alienation with other means than violence.