In banking the stable doors have not been shut behind the horses, much the contrary.

Sir, John Kay writes about: “The enduring metaphor of regulatory policy is the noise of stable doors being firmly shot behind the horse”, “Leveson should have learnt the lesson of the banking crisis”, January 5. 

Sorry, in the current case that metaphor is not applicable. By keeping capital requirements which are much lower for bank exposures perceived as “absolutely not risky”, than for those perceived as “risky”, and regulators now even making it worse with liquidity capital ratios also based on perceived risk, the doors to the stable are kept wide open, and the few strong calm heavy horses that remain in the stable, are also being frightened into running out, which they will do... sooner or later… because even the safest haven becomes a mortal dangerous trap if overpopulated.

PS. If we humans are supplanted by robots, are we doomed to join Jethro Tull’s “Heavy Horses” in retirement?

PS. If the use of horses by Border Patrol officials in Del Rio, Texas, has now been suspended, will these Border Horses follow the Heavy Horses into history?

Last miles and gene pools should be considered when discussing manufacturing jobs.

Sir, John Kay writes about “Our fetish for making things fails to understand ‘realwork’” November 14. Of course, services is as real as any manufacturing job, but, as an economist, I still want to see some solid real assembly line manufacturing jobs close to me, for two reasons: 

First, the just in case; I do not want the last mile for delivering me ploughs, cloth, guns and batteries, to have to go over enemy land. 

Second, manufacturing is part of the biodiversity of a strong economy, and so I would like to keep some good solid real jobs for manufacturing workers, just like you would like to keep some heavy horses, “the Suffolk, the Clydesdale and the Percheron vie”, for your nations’ diversified gene pool reserve. 

Does that make me a manufacturing fetishist? I do not think so. The fact that I can get all on the web, does not mean I can get it all when the web is out.