October 31, 2011

More than how the credit ratings are determined, it is how these are used that is important.

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Sir, Gene B. Phillips makes some very common sense comments on the proposals in Brussels concerning credit ratings and the credit rating age...
October 29, 2011

Even in very shallow waters one finds regulatory arbitrage

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Sir, Gillian Tett in “Baggy surf shorts, ´top freedom´ and the greater cover up” October 29, seems be confessing having engaged in regulator...
October 28, 2011

Mr. Obama. Does no one inform you about what is happening?

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Sir, I read President Barack Obama’s “Now for a firewall to stop Europe’s crisis spreading” October 28, and it makes me wonder about who is ...
October 26, 2011

Mario, for God’s sake, cut off the gas

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Sir, Martin Wolf calls out “Be bold, Mario, put out that fire…” October 26. And I would call out “Mario, for God’s sake, first cut off the g...
October 25, 2011

We do not need bold stability, we need bold risk-taking!

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Sir, Barry Eichengreen and Raghuram Rajan in “Central banks need a bigger and bolder new mandate” October 25, write “Financial stability mus...

We are better off with free market vigilantes

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Sir, George Soros plan to save the eurozone, October 25, includes for the banks “to take instructions from the ECB on behalf of governments”...
October 24, 2011

Is it not time for Euro II?

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Sir, Wolfgang Münchau, in “How Europe is now leveraging for a catastrophe” correctly paints scenarios so horrendous we wish we all were jus...
October 22, 2011

Should Lord Turner have the right to throw the first stone?

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Sir in your “Sustainable banks” October 22 you refer to a speech by Lord Adair Turner in which the chairman of the Financial Services Autho...
October 21, 2011

Mr. Daniel Tarullo, first, stick to your area!

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Sir, according to Robin Harding and Michael MacKenzie, in “Fed urged to weigh new moves to boost economy” October 21, Daniel Tarullo, whose ...

Hollywood would never have allowed Basel III after the Basel II magna flop

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Sir, Kishore Mahbubani writes “Now we know that bankers produced no economic value. Instead they produced financial weapons of mass destruct...

Even the most perfect monetary union would not withstand what attacked the Europe and the Euro

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Sir, Steve Rattner holds with respect to Europe that “today’s crisis is structural… stemming from the euro’s flawed design. “Look to America...
October 19, 2011

The Basel bank reforms are just the continuation of a failure

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Sir, Brooke Masters, while reporting “Countries fail to enact Basel bank reforms” October 19, writes: “Basel II is seen as having contribute...

To stand a better chance of a sunlit future, we must pour sunlight on the truth.

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Sir, Martin Wolf in “There is no sunlit future for the Euro” October 19, writes with respect to the banks holding Greek debt, “Fools who len...
October 12, 2011

A market adjusted very risky sovereign debt could be less risky than an AAA-rated sovereign debt.

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Sir, Patrick Jenkins, Ralph Atkins, Peter Spiegel and Alex Barker in their “Europe’s banks face 9% capital threshold” write that according t...
October 10, 2011

Stefan Ingves, defends a bank leverage of 33 times to 1. Why?

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Brooke Master reported on October 10 that Stefan Ingves, the new chairman of the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision said: “It all boil...
October 09, 2011

Jean Claude Trichet (and Mario Draghi) should not to be condoned by FT

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Sir, you hold that “Trichet leaves Europe in his debt” October 8, as the responsibility for “reckless bank lending”, “rests largely with nat...
September 17, 2011

And what about the elite of rogue regulators?

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November 1999 in an Op-Ed in the Daily Journal of Caracas I wrote “The possible Big Bang that scares me the most is the one that could happe...
September 14, 2011

Mr. Regulator, tear down this Basel wall

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Sir, John Kay writes “Without ringfencing it will soon be a case of ‘here we go again’, September 14. May I suggest that instead of thinking...
September 12, 2011

Basel regulations should be anathema to “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”

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Sir Tom Braithwaite and Patrick Jenkins report that JPMorgan chief says bank rules are “anti-American” , September 12. Jamie Dimon is more...

The Vickers Report, like the Basel regulations, would benefit from defining the purpose of banks.

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The current crisis was caused, almost entirely, by regulators arbitrarily setting risk-weights which allowed banks to lend or invest in sove...
September 09, 2011

Getting rid of the regulatory discrimination against the “risky”, that’s what the world most needs to boost growth.

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Sir, it is sad indeed when in Timothy Geithner’s “What the world must do to boost growth”, September 9, more than 3 years after the crisis s...
September 03, 2011

But how can we sue the devil who tempted?

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Sir in “Suing the banks”, September 3, you write “Those who made the mortgage mess should be accountable”. Indeed, and so I ask, where can w...
August 21, 2011

“No ordinary man could be such a fool”

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My daughter Alexandra, an art fanatic, on hearing my explanation about the mistake of the Basel Committee pointed me to “The forger’s spell...
August 13, 2011

What brain made bank regulators commit their so expensive mistake?

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Sir, Gillian Tett in “The unmasking of our inner reptiles in times of crisis” August 13, writes about Professor Andrew Lo, of MIT segmenting...

When the going gets risky, the risky should get going!

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Sir in your “Financial markets at their wit’s end” August 13 you hold that in the midst of all turmoil “credit market stayed relatively robu...
August 12, 2011

Why would cash-rich investors need bank intermediation?

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Sir, Gillian Tett wonders why “Faced with a choice between betting on the safety of US government, or its banks, cash rich large companies a...
August 05, 2011

Europe´s single market is not worth the Western World going down.

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Sir, would you design an economic package that included a tax on small businesses and entrepreneurs to be used to subsidize a job creation p...
August 04, 2011

America, though undeserving, should remain a triple-A

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Sir, Roger Altman in “Why America deserves to stay a triple A” August 4, argues as if a triple-A rating has something to do with a pure abso...
July 28, 2011

Even the safest haven could become dangerously overcrowded

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Sir, Richard Milne’s “ Beware of safe havens when seeking next financial crisis ” July 28, makes reference to the truth that “Risky assets ...
July 27, 2011

Alan Greenspan, silently fade away, please

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Sir, Alan Greenspan writes “Had banks and other financial entities maintained adequate equity capital-to-asset ratios before the 2008 crash,...
July 25, 2011

The “arbiters under fire” should be the bank regulators.

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Sir, unfortunately, Aline van Duyn and Richard Milne, in “ Arbiters under fire ”, July25, fail to clearly identify the reasons why the curr...
July 22, 2011

The Dodd-Frank Act stays stubbornly on the wrong course towards the regulators no-risk Utopia.

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Sir, Barney Frank writes in reference to the Dodd-Frank Act that “it allows financial institutions to perform vital of accumulating capital ...

Global warming and bank regulations

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Sir, Philip Stephens in “Spasm or spiral? The west´s choice” , July 22, analyzes the current problems of the west. His analysis would have b...
July 21, 2011

The “risky” must unite! Their risk-adjusted dollars should be worth just as much as others.

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Sir, Joseph Stiglitz, in “Now the central bank must act” July 21, makes a reference to “risk-adjusted interest rate”. That is good. I though...
July 20, 2011

It was naïve bank regulators who never contemplated the possibility of the credit ratings being wrong.

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Sir, bank regulators, not me, told banks that if they lent to sovereigns such as Greece, and could obtain a 0.4 percent risk and cost of tra...
July 15, 2011

President Obama and the US Congress are debating the debt ceiling blindfolded

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Sir, with respect to the current debate in Washington on lifting the US debt ceiling it is important to reflect on the fact that had there b...

Voodoo-bank-regulations

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Sir, bank regulators who presume being able to make our banks safer by assigning different capital requirements on lending based on the perc...
July 13, 2011

The vicious communistic styled bank-regulatory circle

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Sir, John Plender, in “Time for eurozone policymakers to grasp the nettle” July 13, makes reference to a “vicious circle [between government...
July 12, 2011

Bank regulators should read up on Heisenberg´s uncertainty principle.

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Sir, Mark Carney and Fabio Panettame discuss the growing sovereign risk in “ Why banks and supervisors must act now ” July 12, since “the r...
July 07, 2011

The confidence in the dollar and USA’s defense capabilities are as connected as they can be

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Sir, when Sebastian Mallaby in “American power requires economic sacrifice”, July 7 discusses USA’s spending on defense he fails to mention ...

“Unwittingly”… or simply stupidly and irresponsibly?

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Sir, Charles Goodhart in “Basel marches down wrong path to tackle systemic risk” July 7, writes “Regulation may unwittingly have actually ad...
June 28, 2011

“Careful, take cover, run for the shadows!”

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Sir, Gillian Tett in “Why they´re happy in the valley of the shadow banks” June 28 worries because “notwithstanding the fact that the financ...
June 27, 2011

God help us, our bank regulators have really been taken for a ride!

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Sir, Brooke Masters in “Regulators agree extra bank capital protection” June 27, reports that now the “global systemic important financia...

We did not have a crisis because of a general lack of bank capital!

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Sir, Tony Jackson discusses the “Basel struggle to put bank capital into perspective” June 27. In doing so he evidences how he and most othe...
June 22, 2011

It has nothing to do with anyone being “macho”, far from it!

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Sir, John Kay in “How not to measure a business – by its rate of return”, June 22, writes “Bank’s macho pursuit of rates of return led not t...

Greece, as any nation, is represented by is the sum of its public and its formal and informal private sector.

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Sir, Martin Wolf in “ Time for common sense on Greece ” June 22 makes a clear case for why common sense should not be delayed more than it ...

The adjustment for risks is based on the "perceived risk" and NOT the real final and total risk.

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Sir, Tom Braithwaite in “Warning on bank rules reform” June 22, writes about the Basel III’s “minimum 7 percent ratio for common equity capi...
June 11, 2011

Control the regulators, do not let them sell “Too big to fail” franchises for a meager 3 percent of additional bank equity.

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John Authers writes that “Self-control is the key to an investors life” June 11. He is right but the self-control that we all need and shou...
June 08, 2011

Just send the regulator geeks packing!

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Sir, Sebastian Mallaby in “The Radicals are right to take on the banks” June 8, suggest that the capital requirements for the banks, in orde...
May 27, 2011

Too much longing for stability creates the perfect storm conditions for instability

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Sir, Samuel Brittan refers to “artificial suppression of volatilities in the name of stability” “The follies and fallacies of our forecaster...
May 26, 2011

A quiz for the candidates to Managing Director of IMF

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Sir, as a humble contribution for the selection of the best Managing Director of the IMF may I submit the following little quiz the candidat...
May 25, 2011

Choosing based on merits defined by the group is often another source of dangerous group-think.

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Sir I could not agree more with the arguments presented by Martin Wolf when he writes that “Europe should not control the IMF” May 25, summi...
May 23, 2011

Save us from these irrational and hysterically risk-adverse bank regulators

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Sir, Patrick Jenkins in “State lending targets are grist to the mill of history” (by the way a much too smart title for someone dumb like me...

Regulators should take the beam out of their own eyes

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Sir, Richard Lambert makes a reference to a research paper by Andrew Haldane, the Executive Director for Financial Stability, and Richard ...
May 20, 2011

Bank regulators are still acting dumb!

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Sir, Tom Braithwaite, Brooke Masters and Jeremy Grant report on the current status of financial regulation in “A shield asunder” May 20.   W...
May 18, 2011

The mother of all boundless optimists must be the bank regulator

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Sir, John Plender asks “How long before we confront a new financial crisis? Usually a severe shock to the financial system damps risk appeti...
May 04, 2011

Too well tuned?

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Sir , John Plender in “It’s time to rewrite fashionable finance ideas”, May 4, refers to the need for some redundancy in the system so as ...
May 03, 2011

Risk-weighting is more than a game, it needs a purpose too.

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Sir, Patrick Jenkins reports that Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority told the Financial Times. “We have spent a lot o...
May 02, 2011

Would I have been better off with a Rockville Gazette than with the Financial Times?

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You journalist who write about banking regulations, should you not find it somewhat curious at least?

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Friend If you as reporters on finance and bank regulations observe that someone has asked the global bank regulators in the Basel Committee...