What could be happening to Martin Wolf?

This letter I am not sending to the Editor… as I do not want to put him in a tight spot.

Martin Wolf writes “Shareholders alone should not decide on AstraZeneca” May 9. 

Who says they do? They might have the last word yes, but their decisions are filtered through a market that considers, more or less, sometimes in ways that cannot be understood, sometime correctly and sometimes incorrectly, all those other factors that Wolf enumerates. 

Wolf does not want the deal go through… he is free to pressure, as he does… but should Wolf also have a final word on AstraZeneca? I don’t think so… and I believe the Editor would agree.

Should workers or government intervene? If they want… they are free to try.

Frankly Martin Wolf’s positions during the last weeks, like when he proposed to “Strip private banksof their power to create money” and put that exclusively in the hands of even fewer public actors; like when he wanted to “Wipe out rentiers with cheap money”; like him repeating over and over again his mantra about fixing the world with government deficits and infrastructure investments; and now this, breathes desperation of some kind. What could be happening?

Martin Wolf, again, our banks are not supposed to be the cautious rentiers our too risk-adverse regulators want them to be

Sir, Martin Wolf, with quite a show of contempt for our traditional savers who have done nothing wrong writes: “cautious rentiers no longer serve a useful economic purpose. What is needed instead are genuinely risk-taking investors.” “Wipe out rentiers with cheap money”, May 6.

It is clear that Wolf keeps wearing those same blinders that have kept him from understanding (or wanting to understand) how capital requirements for banks based on perceived creditor risk, not only distort the allocation of credit to the real economy, but also turn our banks into a new class of cautious rentiers.

Therefore, when he writes “to many, it seems sensible to postpone investment until the world is more predictable”, and cries out for some risk-taking investors, he fails to understand this represents precisely the moment when we most need our “risky” risk-takers, like the medium and small businesses, the entrepreneurs and start-ups, to get going; and similarly fails to understand how these risk-takers are currently being so perversely locked out from access to bank credit… by the regulators!

How can we take of those blinders from Martin Wolf? Sir, I have tried it umpteenths of times, to such an extent he has expressed not wanting to hear one word about it more from me. Could you be of any assistance?

PS. Sir, as I just told you, I am not copying Martin Wolf with this. If you want to do so it’s your decision and your risk :-)