Our economies are being serviced with an unrequested euthanasia, courtesy of bank regulators.

Sir, John Authers and Michael Mackenzie contrasts the Yippie Ki-Yay feelings of the bull run market of the late 1990’s, with the subdued feelings of the current one, “Where have the good times gone?” March 2.

And they are right to do so, cause the differences of then and now are the same as those between signing up for a mortgage to buy your family its first house, and the signing of a reverse mortgage to extract the most value of your house to take care of your aging days.

The money pumped into our economies by nervous central bank technocrats is, because of nervous bank regulating technocrats, not allowed to flow to those who build future, like SMEs and entrepreneurs, for the sole amazingly silly reason that these are perceived as more risky from a credit point of view. And so the money pumps up the value of assets that have not shown much more merit than just being there, available. 

One day historians are, amazed, going to look back at these days in order to try to explain how come a small group of regulators were given power so as to be able to service our economies with an unrequested euthanasia.

Is Europe going from being unintentionally murdered, to suicide, and now to euthanasia?

Sir, Paul de Grauwe writes that if financial stability is to be maintained, a central bank needs to be the lender of last resort to banks and government “because the sovereigns and the banks hold each other in a deadly embrace”, “Stop this guerilla campaign against ECB policy” October 23. 

Yes, but, what if the financial instability was also caused by that same “embrace”? 

I know, and I trust de Grauwe by now also knows (he should) that, had not bank regulators imposed capital requirements which allowed banks to hold very little sometimes even zero capital when lending to European sovereigns, members of “The Infallible”, while at the same time requiring these to hold 8 percent in capital when lending to European small businesses and entrepreneurs, members of “The Risky”, the current eurozone crisis would not have been close as severe as it is. 

And so I wonder whether this regulatory absolute failure needs not to be discussed first, and a plan how to remedy it designed, before ECB assists. Otherwise it just seems to present the characteristics of an unintentional murder, by regulators, muting into a suicide, by sovereigns, kicking the can down the road, and now then muting into a case of euthanasia, by the ECB 

PS. Don´t worry, I am not giving up on making the bank regulatory establishment (and FT) understand… and confess.

Madame Guillotine could be better than assisted euthanasia

Sir, Martin Wolf is absolutely right when in “Do not learn the wrong lessons from Lehman’s fall” September 16 he writes that “No normal profit-seeking business can operate without a credible threat of bankruptcy”. But then he goes into some mumbling about living-wills and assisted euthanasia and though it sounds kind and gentle both these alternatives start when it might already be too late, and so we should not forget that what we could really require is for Madame Guillotine to enter swifter into action.