Avoiding producing global bads is a must for a good globalization.

Sir, between mid 2004 and end of 2007, about a trillion dollars of European savings, flowed into triple-A rated securities guaranteed with mortgages in the subprime sector of the USA. This was primarily the result of absurd capital requirements which allowed European banks to hold or to lend against these securities rated AAA holding only 1.6 percent in capital, which meant being able to leverage their equity 62.5 times to 1. And, of course, disaster ensued.

And all that happened because some bureaucrats, in this case those of the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, were allowed to concoct regulations in splendid isolation without having to answer to anyone.

I mention this in reference to Martin Wolf´s “Globalisation in a time of transition” July 17, because, if we want globalization to produce global public goods we must find ways of decreasing the risks of producing global public bads.

Is Mr Robert Picciotto a closet central planner?

Sir Robert Picciotto a Council Member of The United Kingdom Evaluation Society in a letter titled “Competition will not cure rating industry ills” July 27, writes: “Objective evaluation is a quintessential public good that is unlikely to be generated by the market”.

I sure hope Mr Picciotto is defending a business interest of his own, because the alternative would make him an extremely fanatical and dangerous central planner. How can he write such nonsense precisely in the midst of an economic crisis that resulted directly from the global bad risk information that was requested by those financial regulators who believe that our financial markets should be guided by some very few experts?

“Objective evaluation”? Hah! They have not even agreed what exact risk is to be evaluated or for what purpose exactly.