The dangers of the unknown unknowns are greater than those of the known unknowns.

Sir, Martin Wolf asks, “Is it possible to know the state of the UK public finances under present conditions?” He answers “No. The unknowns are too great.” “Some ‘known unknowns’ about the UK economy”, October 19.

Indeed, but to me, the most dangerous unknowns for the UK, and for much of the rest of the world, are the “unknown” unknowns. 

Like how much of the savings for the future, of those who are the least able to manage major upheavals, has been invested in houses; those homes that because of so much preferential finance increased their prices so much, that they were turned into also being risky investment assets?

Houses are good investments… until too many want to convert them simultaneously into main-street purchasing capacity.

Like how much of the illusion of public debt sustainability is solely the result of preferential regulations, like the Basel Accord of 1988 decreeing a 0% risk weight to sovereigns and a 100% risk weight to citizens?

Any sector given more preferential access to credit than other is doomed to unsustainable debt… just like Greece was doomed by the 0% risk weight some yet unknown EU authorities awarded it.

Sir, when compared to these in general unknown unknowns, the known unknowns, like Brexit or trade wars, are just peanuts. 

@PerKurowski

Martin Wolf, a country needs its elites to inspire much more the “possible” than to preach the “impossible”.

Sir, in “Way back Home”, about his World War II days, we hear Rod Stewart singing: “we always kept the laughter and the smile upon our face. In that good-old-fashion British way with pride and faultless grace”.

And then we read Martin Wolf, reciting six impossible, not one possible, and ending with: “The EU holds the cards and it knows it holds the cards…The UK is no longer its 19th-century self, but a second-rank power in decline”, “Six impossible notions about ‘global Britain’’ November 31.

How utterly depressing!

We saw when Holland got smacked with the Dutch disease, and instead of just taking it laying down, they forgot about manufacturing, and decided to become the distributors of Europe… (at least that is the version I have been told)

Just days ago, November 29, in “Challenges of a disembodied economy” Martin Wolf discussing Jonathan Haskel’s and Stian Westlake “Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy” was illustrating the huge changes the world was going through, when for instance “Apple, the world’s most valuable company, owns virtually no physical assets. It is its intangible assets — integration of design and software into a brand — that create value.” In such a new world, is really the UK dependence on EU the same as previously seen? Does anyone really know what cards one holds nowadays? 

The day after Brexit, Britain will not be very different from EU, it will mostly be sharing the same old and new problems as EU and, unless Britain decides that is not to happen, there is nothing that eliminates the possibility of Britain’s relations with EU being more intensive and better than ever. A divorce, though it might be traumatic, does not mean the divorcees cannot get along splendidly.

Does that mean the Brexit road is easy rosy? Of course not, but there is a vital need for Britain, and for Wolf, to stop lamenting so much, and get down to work at doing the best, not out a bad situation, but out of an for everyone unknown situation.

Like when Rod Stewart’s song ends with hearing Churchill reciting: "We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." 

PS. To begin with you should reverse having surrendered your banks to dangerous risk aversion, and eliminate the loony risk weighted capital requirements for banks. 

@PerKurowski

Perceptions change realities. In banking, what’s perceived risky is safe and what’s perceived safe is dangerous

Sir, John Authers writes: “It is not the risks we worry about that harm us. It is what Donald Rumsfeld once called the “unknown unknowns” that we were not thinking about and did not even know about. In markets, assets deemed high risk tend to be priced so that they do little harm when things go wrong”, “Crises happen when what is thought to be safe surprises us”, November 11.

Precisely. So how would now Authers explain the logic behind the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, the pillar of current bank regulations? That which in Basel II risk weighted what is AAA rated with 20% and the below BB- with 150%. That which by allowing banks different leverages for different assets senselessly distorts the allocation of bank credit. That and about which I have written more than 2.600 letters to FT and that it has decided to ignore.

Sir, when will you dare to wake up to that harrowing fact that our banks are in the hands of regulators that have no idea of what they are up to? Or do you really think that all this is a minor problem?

@PerKurowski