And now what?

And now what?

And now what is society to tell all those who entered into private social security schemes all over the world? Sorry chaps you should not have risked it on your own!

To sell the whole concept of one generation after the other always finding initial final market conditions favourable enough so as to in guarantee them that, in the long run, their older days will be taken cared of, is almost fraudulent.

In this respect I very much share with Peter L. Bernstein that “the possibility the long run has run away is one of the few pieces of good news. “In the long run, we are searching for answers” February 26.

At last we now can go back and discuss on more objective grounds the real differences between pay as you go social security plans based on solidarity between generations and the everyone-is-on-his-own type of private insurance schemes sold lately.

But would they listen?

Martin Wolf suggests “What Obama should tell the leaders of the Group of 20”, February 25 and it all sounds so extremely intelligent and rational. Problem is though that the chances of obtaining a rational responses to rational requests are very slim in a world where there has been so little capacity to respond to any threat of something that could occur more than a week ahead, and in a world where so many promises, like that of .7% of GNP to foreign assistance are continuously and shamelessly broken by most.

In this respect if I was Obama, which I am of course not, lucky you, I would start by asking... how can we make sure that the upcoming summit will not be a waste of time since we clearly have no time to waste?

As a bare minimum, before flying over the pond, I would request the Europeans to deposit at least half of their voting rights in the International Monetary Fund, in the same escrow account where I on behalf of the US would also be depositing its own half of the voting rights, also before flying over the pond, and so as to be able to proceed down the road of international cooperation in a much more credible and expedient way. Wasting even a second of the summit on the voting right issue should just not be an option.

Also if I was Obama, and Martin Wolf, I would stop from dividing the world between surplus and deficit countries since that division helps very little when trying to foment a spirit of international cooperation when clearly all the countries are hurting.

Credit rating agencies...indispensable? Absolute nonsense!

Sir although you finally admit to the lead role the credit rating agencies played in causing this crisis you still hold that we can’t live without them and describe their services as “indispensable” “Quo vaditis, raters?” February 23. Absolute nonsense! Of course we can live without them.

There are millions of credit rating agents performing their daily function in what we all know as the market but the problem is that the importance of their diversified judgements were diminished when the regulatory authorities assigned oligopoly powers in the risk information market.

The credit rating agencies have been around for many decades but it was not until the Basel Committee sent out the message that “if they are good enough for us they should be good for you” that they were empowered to do so much damage.

Sir think of what could have happened to a financial world without officially endorsed credit rating agencies and what really happened where trillions of dollars followed their AAA’s into the subprime swamp lands. If you have any sense you must come to the conclusion that what is indispensable is to immediately strip them from their powers.

Do you sincerely believe that we can make the credit ratings to perform so good that nothing of this or even a worse crisis can’t happen. Do you not know that the biggest risks lurch in what is perceived as the safest waters?

For all your experience and reputation you seem quite unwise and perhaps even incapable of learning. Or is it that you have an undisclosed conflict of interest with the credit rating agencies?

If interest rates fell, borrowings would still jump.

Sir Martin Wolf writes “When interest rates fell in the early 80’s, borrowing jumped. The chances of igniting a surge in borrowing now are close to zero”, “Japanese lesson for a world of balance-sheet deflation” February 18.

He is wrong the world has not changed that much, if the interest rates fell borrowings would still jump. The problem Wolf has is that he is looking only at the Federal Reserve’s intervention rate which is close to zero and cannot fall much more, and not at the rates that really do matter, for example the interest rates on credit cards. The interest rate on a credit card in the US for someone like me that has a substantial credit line available and has never defaulted on any payment is currently 17%.

With a rate of 17% low inflation expectations, for now at least, and cash being king, I would have to be an absolute nut to borrow even if I most fervently wanted to help stimulate the economy.

In order to reform regulations we need first to reform the regulators.

Sir John Dizard is calling the bluff of the regulators in “The inside story of reforms is that there is no story” February 17. Well done! Now in order to have a chance to make truly worthwhile reforms there are two things that must happen.

First we need a totally new crop of regulators, most especially in the headquarters of the Basel Committee as those currently there have dug themselves so deep in their framework they have no earthly chance of getting out of it. As an example they cannot even visualize a world without “trustworthy” credit rating agencies when we all know well that no one but God should be given so much trust.

Second there must be some type of accountability. For instance the thousands of licensed professionals involved in generating those masses of lousy mortgages to the subprime sector should, as a bare minimum, have their license revoked for five years.

Sorry, if I am a party pooper

Sir Mohamed El-Erian finds a silver lining for our current crisis in that “As the risks become clearer, a greater degree of international policy co-ordination may emerge”, “Era of policy activism opens door to global co-ordination” February 17.

I am sorry if I am something of a party pooper but may I remind him that this crisis was caused precisely by the international policy co-ordination in banking regulations that took place in Basel. Without the Basel Committee we would most certainly have had other bank crisis but none as systemic and severe as the current one.

Will the world trust the American taxpayer?

Sir Mohamed El-Erian in respect to the Federal Reserve being “prepared” to buy Treasury bonds asks “Will the world be comfortable with two US public agencies offsetting operations that ultimately must be supported by someone else?”, “Era of policy activism opens door to global co-ordination” February 17.

That is either a slightly coward or a too kind way to phrase the issue since that “someone else”, when push comes to shove, is no one else but the American taxpayer.

The US dollar instead of “In God we Trust” should state “In the American taxpayer we trust and thereafter in God’s will”. What will the markets do when they realize the real picking order?

“Tea with FT” is your External Devil’s Advocate

Sir in “Sounding off” February 13 you speak about the importance for an institution of a “Devil’s Advocate appointed to challenge and probe its assumptions and evidence”. This is exactly the role of a blog like “Tea with FT”.

In your case you have censored and tried to have the whistleblower fired by stopping from publishing his letters, suddenly, most probably because the feathers of some journalistic Prima-Donna were ruffled. The beauty in this case though is that even if the FT establishment wants the Devil’s advocate to disappear, he still hangs in there, on the web.

Does a Devil’s Advocate always have to be right? Absolutely not! That is not his role.

Can a Devil’s Advocate be advocating too often and therefore only be accepted if he limits himself to one letter a month? Of course not! That would be plain silly.

But a Devil’s Advocate can surely not appoint himself? Why not? Do you prefer the management or the Prima-Donnas appointing him?

Cheers

The debate has been sequestered by the machos and the wimps.

Sir Samuel Brittan seems to divide us economic debater between the machos, those who hold that this is no time for hesitance, better too much stimulus than to little and that we should forget about how we are going to pay for it all; and the wimps those, who urge more caution. In my case I confess that I often find myself among the latter, though mostly as a reaction to the runaway machismo of the machos. “Economic dominoes are still falling” February 13.

The truth, which as usual lies somewhere in the middle, is that we all should be very careful machos, and by which I imply we should stimulate a lot but make sure that every cent of stimulus counts.

In this respect (once again) I wish to point out that there are other issues that need to be looked at, such as the interest rates charged on credit cards.

To stimulate consumption placing compromises of a trillions of dollar on the shoulder of future generations of tax payers while at the same time allowing credit card companies to charge 17% interest rates in an economy where inflationary expectations are low, has nothing to do with machos or wimps, only with plain stupidity.

I am therefore proposing that the US government and the Congress should limit the interest rates that can be charged on credit cards to something like 5% and perhaps, for a year, as a partial compensation, pay the creditors an additional 3% on any balance financed. That stimulus cost would amount to a meager 30 billion dollars, per each trillion of credit card debt.

Doing it would put real money in the pockets of the real consumers and simultaneous work at solving the next wave of toxic assets soon to hit the markets.

Balloons explode, don’t they?

It is amazing that so soon after having witnessed what disasters comes from having empowered credit agencies to put up their AAA signs showing the roads to no risk-lands Arvind Subramanian and John Williamson dare to recommend setting up zones for asset prices. “Dear I don’t think we should buy our house here because it has a 343 bubble rating. Perhaps I should look for a job in Toledo?”, “Put the puritans in charge of the punchbowl”, February 12.

There is nothing wrong for a central banker to keep an eye on assets prices such as houses to decide on monetary policies but if he wants to make any official use of it he should first make sure he does not own a house so as to be free of any conflict of interest but, more importantly, he needs to remember that bubbles, even though they might hurt when they explode, have a role to play in taking human and economic development forward.

A world without bubbles gets to be closer to a world without illusions.

Limit and subsidize credit card rates

I heard Geithner in the Congress and I read Martin Wolf’s “Why Obama’s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks” February 11 and it is clear that they and most of us have entered into a quite unproductive phase of the debate, where we are all threading muddy waters not getting anywhere.

We should all take a break, from discussing solely about banks, and discuss those other participants of the economy we know as the consumers.

The US consumers face incredibly and unexplainably high rates on their credit cards, like 17% if in current status and 26% if in default.

Why does not the US government not limit those rates to 4 and 6% respectively and as an incentive offer to pay the creditor a 3% compensation on any balance financed over the next year? That would only cost a meagre 30 billion dollars per trillion of credit card debt.

Doing that would put real money in the pockets of the real consumers and simultaneous work at solving the next wave of toxic assets soon to hit the markets.

After such fresh air we might take up our current discussion with new energies.

The scary cognitive dissonance of the Basel Committee

Sir Whitney Tilson in “Lessons to be learnt from losses” February 10 writes about some harmless “cognitive dissonance” in a group “who believed the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood on December 21, 1954” and then extrapolates from that in order to explain some recent investment behaviour.

But there is also quite dangerous “cognitive dissonance”. For instance the way in which the Basel Committee is now responding to its absolute failure in trying to avoid a crisis by creating disincentives for bank to assume credit risks as measured by others, is now slowly evolving into the belief that they could and should measure and fight systemic risk. That is indeed a really scary “cognitive dissonance”.

A KeynesKeynesKeynes economic plan?

Sir Benn Steil is both correct and timely with his “Keynes and the triumph of hope over economics” February 6. But, just as well, he could have titled it “Keynes and the triumph of the shortcut over the real way”.

When we ser how many use Keynes to back up any call for stimulus, no matter how big, without even looking at what is going on at street level, like the enormous interest rates currently charge by the credit card companies to finance and refinance, it only reminds us how the credit ratings got their AAA ratings so wrong.

Do not dangerously overcrowd the safe-havens.

Sir Willem Buiter in “The ‘submerging market’ crisis”, February 6, proposes that the US and UK Treasuries should cover the Fed and the Bank of England for the credit risks they take on when they purchase private securities. This is one good way of looking at it.

I would prefer the Fed and the Bank of England charging their respective Treasuries with a commission on all public debt issued. This way the Treasuries would know better that the benefits derived from safe-havens considerations is really not for them to keep; and also that it costs a bundle to keep ever more crowded safe-harbors safe.

That the markets trust Treasuries has more to do with the lack of alternative ports during a very difficult storm than with any intrinsic trust in the harbor chiefs. The governments need to humbly accept that before they and we are left with nothing.

The world needs a Davos meeting without financiers

I just received a letter from one of those big banks that has recently received billions of dollars in official assistance. It informs me that if I finance my purchases with my credit card, where I have ample credit available since I repay all my consumptions monthly, my interest rate will be 17% and, if I enter into any default, 26%. This all in a country where there are no inflation expectations; the government is paying zero rate on its short term borrowings and contemplates a close to a trillion dollar stimulus package; and everyone wants the consumers to spend more to get the economy from falling. For a consumer to finance the anticipation of any purchases with these interest rates would be an act of extreme irresponsibility.

And then I read Martin Wolf’s “Why Davos man is waiting for Obama to save him” February 4, and though it seems such an utterly sensible article that recommends “focus all attention on reversing the collapse on demand now... employ overwhelming force. The time for ‘shock and awe’ in economic policymaking is now”; it only makes me reflect on how much we need a Davos type meeting where the financial sector is not invited and where one could freely dare to ask questions such as... why should we stimulate the economy before making sure that all the new green sprouts are not going to be devoured by some of the players in the financial sector?... and how could we get a finance sector that serves our needs too?

Anything you can rate I can rate better!

We have just been served proof of how dangerous systemic risk are was when the regulators induced the world to follow the advice of some few credit rating agencies; and millions will lose their life savings and millions could even die as a direct consequence; and now Lasse Pedersen and Nouriel Roubini propose to dig us even further in the hole we are in with their “A proposal to prevent wholesale financial failure” January 30; where they suggest to adjust the capital requirements of the banks by rating their systemic risk. What Gods do they think they are, believing they can fully understand systemic risks and that their interference on a lower level would not alter the system and produce even much more advanced and dangerous systemic risk?

From the start I was opposed to the bank regulations emanating from Basel suspecting that these could easier lead us to something bad than to something good, but on this proposal I just know it to be so. Please… can we go in the other direction of simplifying how we regulate, so that we all understand more what we are doing?

Is George Soros long on oil from Texas?

Sir George Soros in “The game changer” January 29, instead for advocating for a tax on the gas at the pump so that the gas is used less and other energy sources can compete better, he argues for an outright protectionist duty on oil “to keep the domestic price above, say, $70 per barrel.” Is George Soros long on oil from Texas?

Governments and politicians should feel much less smug.

Sir Martin Wolf shows us to be between a rock and a hard place in “Why dealing with the huge debt overhanging is so difficult” January 28. On one hand “liquidation” and bankruptcies would result in a depression and so “that option must be insane” but if, central banks are aggressive enough, we would “relapse into inflation [which] would be a huge policy failure”.

What are we to do? Just the realization of where we find ourselves is a better place to start. That way at least we will have a chance to avoid the push to spend and stimulate massively and fast, no matter how, and begin to behave more rationally in terms of the implementation so as to get the most effective stimulus of sustainable growth out of every cent of new public debt invested; and in terms of thinking about the taxes that will be needed to pay for it all.

But to have any chance to get it right we also need governments and politicians to stop feeling so smug about the current interest levels and to think that markets are brimming with confidence in their actions. If we disregard what markets are paying in premiums for access to a temporary safe haven in the midst of an initial confusion, many sovereign public debts might have already surpassed their long term sustainable levels.

Money, money, and money.

Sir Jeffrey Sachs is absolutely right when in “The Tarp is a fiscal straitjacket”, January 28, he urges for a “sound medium-term fiscal framework”. Since the markets quite often even when such a framework is spelled out do not believe in it, they have their statistically valid reasons for that, can you imagine how spooked they could get when asked by the stimulators to join a spending crusade without even hearing a word on taxes?

Indeed, since taxes seem to have reached a real low point in terms of credibility, having lost so much of their real progressiveness over the years, the first thing to do is to make a careful inventory of the supplies and to figure out how to get them to the troops, in time. As Prince Montecuccoli taught “To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money.”

What freewheeling?

Sir Gillian Tett in “Bankers and bureaucrats seek a new philosophy” January 28, she mentions that “Western Governments… know they cannot return to the type of freewheeling world seen earlier this decade. What freewheeling is she speaking about? As far as I can see the current crisis is the direct consequence of the financial capitals having been concentrated so as to travel overly relaxed on some rigid AAA-tracks which led them over a precipice. I am absolutely sure that if capitals had really been freewheeling nothing like this sort of horrendous systemic crisis would have occurred.

Desperation is indeed a bad counsel

Sir Peter Boone and Simon Johnson make a proposal for how to re-privatise the de-facto nationalized banks by means of the government receiving and selling warrants which would allow new private equity and shareholders to step in at a more reasonable fiscal cost. To save the banks we must stand up to the bankers, January 27.

That could be, though I remember that one of the reason for the successful Chilean recovery after their bank crisis was that the old shareholders were given a repurchase option, at a price that compensated the government of which I believe many have already been executed.

What I do take exception from is when they express that one of the problems is that the banks would refuse to sell their assets and so “the regulators need to apply without forbearance their existing rules and principles for the marking to market of all illiquid assets. The law must be used against accountants and bank executives who deviate from the rules on capital requirement.” Are they going berserk? Desperation is clearly a bad counsel. Their intention sounds like forcing everyone who owes more on a house than what it is worth to have to walk away from it even if he is willing to stay. Besides, what does market value really signify when markets do not exist?

Actually the truth is that to save our banks we must first stand up to our financial regulators and who are, without doubt, the first to blame for this crisis.

The government needs to provide venture capital for new banks.

Sir George Soros discusses “The right and wrong way to bail out the banks” January 23, as if bailing out the banks was our problem. We need to bail out our economy and if doing so we happen to bail-out the banks, great, if not hard luck.

At this moment we have a regulatory system for the banks that by means of the minimum capital requirements prioritizes risk avoidance. What we need instead is a regulatory system that helps us assure that the banks prioritize what is most needed.

In this respect, with government funds, I would create many new banks, with a fix capital requirement for any credit, for instance 6 per cent, and I would nominate a series of management groups to run these banks giving them the incentive of a generous purchase option for the bank in a couple of years, and asking for a secured indemnity in case of any particularly irresponsible act committed by any of these manager.

Also if these banks want to buy “toxic assets”, because they believe it is in their interest to do so, the better.

Sir I guess that it most probably must have been a very long time since George Soros walked down any Main Street.

The rating agencies credibility is not a result of any market

Sir Paul De Grauwe is right suggesting to alert the investors with a label that says “Warning: rating agencies can do you harm” January 23; as you know I have been advocating precisely that for years. But, when De Grauwe expresses surprise that the rating agencies are still around, even after having failed so miserably, he forgets that who put them in power and keep them there were the financial regulators and not the market. As long as “if they’re good enough for the Basel Committee they’re good enough for you” reigns, the markets cannot free themselves from these dangerous agents of systemic risk.

http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2007/08/we-need-to-attach-warning-message-to.html

Geithner could be heading onto the wrong direction.

Sir FT reports quite extensively on the confirmation hearings of Timothy Geithner, the Treasury nominee held by the US Senate’s Finance Committee on January 21. Though he did not give away much on what he will do I cannot say that I disagreed with most of what he said… it all sounded so reasonably. But given that we do not live in reasonable times what most interested me was whether he possessed the type of deep-core beliefs or philosophy that helps anyone to stand firm against the storming winds, and I must confess I felt somewhat disappointed.

When Geithner referred to the credit rating agencies he mentioned they were guilty of “systematic failures in judgement” but he did not say a single word about the regulator’s fatal mistake when empowering the credit rating agencies they created the systemic risk bomb that was bound to explode, sooner or later, as it sure did. Anyone who at this moment might be inclined to dig us even further down in the regulatory hole we’re in is someone that I cannot feel truly comfortable with.

It might neither be time for an international symphony orchestra

Sir you hold that a global financial crisis requires global co-operation and therefore it is “Not a time for a one man-band” January 22. But, whether we are able to stimulate the right kind of projects that will serve sustainable growth, or hand out the most efficient tax-rebates that produce the most suitable demand that will all, at the end of the day, no matter how much international cooperation there is, depend almost exclusively on the very local capacity to implement. Of course it cannot be a one-man band; it has to be a very well rehearsed local symphony orchestra.

I cannot refrain from reminding you again that I bet my last shirt on that we would all have been better off without that international cooperation called the Basel Committee. Of course “no country will escape this storm on its own” but that is no valid reason to jump all in the same life-boat. That each country while implementing their own rescue plans needs to consider the international implications carefully, that is a totally different question.

Having considered the Financial Times a defender of free financial markets, by which, just in case, I do not mean unregulated markets, I find it somewhat bewildering to see it championing global financial central planning. Should we not better reserve that for the fight against climate change?

The nuclear bridge

A letter that was not published by FT

Sir, whether sturdy or weak, safe or dangerous, short or long, no matter how we look at it the nuclear energy is the best and perhaps even the only bridge available to take us from a carbon driven to a clean renewable energy driven world. 

In this respect I do not harbor any of the concerns that Oleg Deripaska expresses about the current drop in oil prices or the financial crisis delaying the development of a nuclear response to the world’s energy, as long as we can convince regulators that it is high time for them to roll up their sleeves and work 24-7-365 to speed up without running of course, whatever due diligence procedures are needed, “A nuclear response to our energy problems” January 22.

If you ask me what would be one of the best stimulus packages we could come up with, dollar for dollar that would be to double or triple the budgets of entities such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission… and then crack the whip.

Mr Jouyet cannot have the cake and eat it too

Sir as reported by Paul J Davies in “France demands stronger ratings supervision” January 22, it looks like Mr Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the French regulator strives to have the cake and eat it too. On one hand he wants to increase the supervision of the credit rating agencies and so which presumably would make them more “trustworthy” for all to follow and on the other hand he “wants to see the role of agencies in the financial system reduced.” He needs to make up his mind. May I suggest he concentrates on the latter alternative as the first would only risk digging ourselves deeper into the hole we’re in.

Let us pray it is not too late.

Sir Peter Thal Larsen reports January 21 that the “UK regulator helps to ease the pressure” lowering the capital requirements for banks when at the “low point of the cycle”. Not a minute too late.

Requiring higher capital when already awarded credits are being discovered to be more risky than previously thought, and allowing lower capital when credits could be perceived to be less risky, is one of the fundamental ways how the financial regulators that were responsible for the Basel framework created and leveraged new cyclicality for the world to suffer. Shame on them!

Listening to their “we did not know” is just the reason we do know that bank regulations must not be allowed to remain an exclusive and reserved affair for bank regulators.

Let our bankers become bankers again.

Sir Mohamed El-Erian says “We have to bring the banking sector back to life” January 21, because “Banks play an important role in any economy…efficiently channelling funds to productive uses”, and I believe he is even more right than he is aware of.

For years I have been arguing that our banks need to rescue the role they should play in the economy and which they lost when they were ordered by means of the minimum capital requirements based exclusively on risks, imposed on them by the regulatory authorities in Basel, to be risk-adverse entities and basically automated arbitrators trying to capture whatever spread existed between what the market was requiring in interest rates and what it should charge in accordance to the credit rating agencies opinions on the inherent risks.

Yes, now, more than ever, we need our bankers to become bankers again, and to regain the capacity of looking their clients in their eyes so as to explore on behalf of the society all the avenues that exist for the creation of decent jobs and sustainable economic growth. It is absolutely not too “late to stop banks becoming utilities”; for the simple reason that we cannot afford to let them.

Obama has more than enough on his own plate

Sir Martin Wolf is right blaming an absolutely excessive consumption gap between deficit countries led by the US and surplus countries led by China for the ongoing implosion, now when the music stopped, and that therefore it is not only the US’s responsibility to provide the fixes, “Why President Obama must mend a sick world economy”, January 21.

I would go even one step further. When Wolf mentions that “much of the expansion is expected to come from the US Federal Budget” we should not, even for a second, “leave aside the question of whether this will work”, knowing, as Wolf says, that the “US cannot run fiscal deficits of 10 per cent of GDP indefinitely.” In this sick world economy, one of the few healthy spots that remains is the dollar, curiously the representative of the leading deficit country, and to keep the dollar healthy should be one of Obama’s prime responsibilities.

Anyhow anyone that stops looking at yesterdays statistics and walks the main streets, in real time, will soon come to the conclusion that whatever “good” the fiscal expansion might bring to the USA, pardoning financial losses, reducing excess inventories, financing private savings, making the local adjustments easier, a sustainable USA expansion does not carry sufficient punch to assist in keeping up any significant consumption disequilibrium, and so the adjustments now going on in the surplus countries must, unfortunately, be absolutely brutal. That though cannot be Obama’s prime concern; he has enough on his own plate. In other words, the world cannot afford the US drowning while trying uselessly to save it. “Healer heal thyself”, comes more readily to my mind.

Finally, Wolf rightly mentions that “more of the world’s surplus capital needs to flow into investments in emerging countries” but for that to happen the financial system requires two reforms that have to take place in Basel. First to take away the power of agencies to set up AAA directions signs and that will by sheer inertia always tend to guide capital to status quo economies; and second to eliminate the current formula of minimum capital requirements for banks based on risks and that places an additional tax burden on those risks that are more prevalent in emerging markets. Those two reforms are in my mind more important and urgent than the also much needed IMF governance reforms that Wolf focuses his attention on.

How do we get better regulations with the same not-accountable regulators?

Sir Frank Partnoy holds that “It is ironic that credit rating agencies still retain such power. They were a significant cause of the crisis. They helped fire the fatal bullet by giving unreasonably high credit ratings to ´super senior´ tranches of subprime mortgage-backed collateralised debt obligations. It is astonishing that their views would matter to anyone at this late date. Yet government regulations continue to rely on ratings.”, “Prepare to bury the fatally wounded big banks” January 19.

Indeed it is ironic, even outright disgraceful, and the only explanation for it must be found in the total lack of accountability of the financial regulators. These regulators are now conveniently shielding themselves behind all those calls for more regulations, and which become so hard to explain if one is forced to accept the fact that there is such thing as bad regulators.

Eurozone prayers!

Sir Wolfgang Münchau describes the Eurozone as resilient enough to handle a sovereign debt crisis scenario thinking that “a full-fiscal union would be more probable than a break-up”, “What if´ becomes the default question”, January 19. Unfortunately, when he argues that “if Germany, for example had such an incentive to leave, it would almost certainly forgo that perceived economic benefit and stay for political reasons” he enters the land of hopeful wishing. How does Münchau manage to ignore that “perceived economic benefit” represents precisely one of the strongest political reasons?

From the beginning I have always thought of Europe going into a monetary union without being a true political union as quite an adventurous proposition but, to have an economic crisis to lay the ground for a political reunion, sounds much more like believing in miracles. Anyhow, I agree, let us pray for a miracle.

In taxes we need to start from scratch.

Sir I certainly appreciate Clive Crook’s “Four fixes for America’s fiscal fiasco” January 19, since the very first thing that came to my mind in this crisis was a… how are we now going to pay for it all? … especially since taxes have lost so much credibility around the world that they are even described more and more solely in terms of growth inhibitors.

In order to regain their credibility the taxes have to be of a progressive nature; they have to stop being overly targeted at the salaries in the formal economies; and they have to be aligned with new global realities. The only way to achieve a tax system that fulfils those criteria is by means of a sincere non-partisan cooperation that is allowed to reconstruct the whole tax systems… from scratch. In the US as in many other countries there is no way of making much sense out of the existent voluminous and confusing tax-codes.

How we now wish the regulators had let things be!

Sir no one would contradict Chris Giles’s opinion that “Regulation is small price for protection from another crunch” January 17, the question is though… what kind of protection? … could we not make it worse?

In this respect, to all those who believe that the more intrusive these regulations are the better, let me remind them that not long ago our financial regulators made a choice between the following options:

a. To leave things as they were, with the same capital requirements for banks on all credits, which if 8% meant a maximum 12.5:1 leverage; allowing the banks to keep taking their own credit decisions without having to look over their shoulder at what the credit rating agencies opined or,

b. To impose on the banks a formula of minimum capital requirements based on “risk”, as the regulators understood risk to be, and which for instance for corporations with a AAA ratings required only 1.6% of capital which allowed for these credits a 62.5:1 leverage; and forcing the banks to heed the opinions of the credit rating agencies sending out the message of “if these official risk-surveyors are good enough for the bank regulators then they are good enough for the banks”.

The regulators, sadly, unwisely, chose option b…how we now wish they had not changed a thing!

It is not a question of stimulus against public investments.

Sir Joseph Stiglitz pleads “Do not squander America’s stimulus on tax cuts” January 16 preferring the investment in infrastructure. The issue is wrongly phrased, it is not a question of either or.

If stimulus one needs to make certain that these go to those who provide the most effective demand creation in sustainable sectors; if infrastructure these have to create employment in the short term and serve as support for long term sustainable growth.

But, whatever alternative is chosen, there is a need to follow sound implementation principles. For instance, in infrastructure projects and in order to guarantee ownership, these should be proposed by the States municipalities or even private corporations; for transparency these should be approved by a public committee after a brief evaluation of the projects on what they offer in terms of jobs and sustainable growth; and, finally, for accountability, the projects should only receive the funds in strict pre-specified terms and conditions, cash on delivery.

Whatever, but please pull out the aching tooth fast!

Sir, Martin Wolf is absolutely right when he indicates that the window of opportunity for the USA to be able to sort out all that it needs in order to reassume economic growth of a hopefully more sustainable kind, before they hit the roof of unacceptably high levels of debt, is short, “Why Obama’s plan is still inadequate and incomplete” January 14. I would hold it to be very short.

It reminds me of a letter that I wrote to the Editor and that you published in August 2006 on “The long term benefits of a hard landing” and where I argued “that the gradualism of it all could create the most accumulated pain.”

The letter said “Why not try to go for a big immediate adjustment and get it over with? …. This is what the circle of life is all about and all the recent dabbling in topics such as debt sustainability just ignores the value of pruning or even, when urgently needed, of a timely amputation… Yes, a collapse would ensue and we have to help the sufferer, but the morning after perhaps we could all breathe more easily and perhaps all those who, in the current housing boom could not afford to jump on the bandwagon, would then be able to do so, and take us on a new ride, towards a new housing boom, in a couple of decades.”

The Fed Reserve needs many strong helping hands in order to prevent a dollar rout

Sir Mansoor Mohi-uddin gives us a “Five point plan for Fed Reserve to help prevent a dollar rout” January 13 and we do appreciate the intentions, especially since for the time being the undisputable role of the dollar in the international system represents much of the stability there is left in it, and we shiver to think what would happen if that pillar would yield.

That other countries will go down the route of quantitative easing and therefore “there will once again be no major alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency” is, in any such scenario, of little consolation.

But the defence of the dollar is not solely a Fed responsibility. Sooner or later the market, in these days when the only thing it hears are on tax-rebates and stimulate-until-you-drop plans, will expect some indications as to how the American tax payer intends to help to pay for it all. Much as it hurts me since I come from an oil producing country an announcement of a dollar plus new tax per gallon of gas in the US would do a lot more to prevent a dollar rout than all the squirming of the Fed Reserve put together.

Send out the dogs!

Sir Aline van Duyn does very right reminding us that “Messy question of toxic assets still needs an urgent answer” January 9. There must be without any doubt some value in those assets and besides, in these circumstances of uncertainty, even knowing for sure they’re worthless could have some value.

I remember having heard about the possibility of the US government empowering some financial experts to go out and hunt down the value of the toxic assets and paying them a percentage of the bounty. What happened with such a splendid idea… too republican?

Do you belong to an unkown sect of Austrian economists?

Sir in “A plan to spend – and to pay it back” January 9 you admonish that “Congress should not commit themselves to fiscal consolidation too soon”. Are you joking? Don’t you know Congress is composed by politicians?

Also I cannot understand why you egg on the announcement of even larger stimulus packages knowing that these will come, in due time, if there is room for them. Could it be that you belong to a sect of extreme Austrians economists that want Obama to spell out the real figure so that the markets are spooked right away from believing the dollar is a safe haven?

Indeed what would Keynes be saying?

Sir we must be grateful for Peter Clarke’s very enjoyable “In the long run we are all dependent on Keynes” January 8, not the least for the timely reminder that “the General Theory had advocated regulating economy through investment, not consumption”.

It would be interesting to speculate about whether Keynes would have repeated his “I was the only non-Keynesian there” if witnessing how his name is now used to support the build-up of US public debt in order to create bailouts and stimulus packages to save the world from a monstrous depression, given the extremely high stake of said debt becoming so unsustainably large to cause the mother of all meltdowns.

Between the opinions of Vaclav Klaus and Kevin Rudd I am all for the first

Sir Kevin Rudd the Australian prime minister holds that “Leaders must act together to solve the crisis” January 8, because “Fragmented responses could yield to policies that run the risk of accelerating rather than ameliorating the crisis”. This is a bad argument since there is very little to assure us that a coordinated official response would not do exactly the same.

For someone like myself who for years now have fought the efforts of regulators to impose a coordinated global oversight on risks by using some few credit rating agencies it is clear that I prefer the much humbler attitude in reference to the value of government interferences expressed yesterday by the President of the European Union Vaclav Klaus in “Do not tie the markets – free them”.

The US, sooner or later, has to start paying for what it consumes.

Martin Wolf in for “Choices made in 2009 will shape our destiny” January 7, describes very accurately our starting point saying that “relying on vast US fiscal deficits and expansion of central bank credit is a temporary – albeit necessary- … will not deliver a durable return to growth. Fundamental changes are needed”. Wolf also points out the problem of the “persistent external and internal imbalances in the US and the world” that result from the US and a number of other chronic deficit countries” having “structurally deficient capacity to produce tradable goods and services.

Unfortunately, after such a clear diagnosis, Wolf proceeds hinting at the need of even higher fiscal deficits without giving much clues as of to what those required fundamental changes could be; and so let me then suggest one truly fundamental change, that of the US starting to pay for its own spending spree instead of having the world finance it.

One aspect conspicuously absent in the discussions is the need for the US to come up with a new generation of taxes that are appropriate to the current conditions and that work in a globalized setting. One type of these taxes, namely a tax on gas, has at least started to be discussed in Washington.

Absent the willingness of the US to pick up the bill for their own consumption, they might buy themselves some time if China buys up a million of houses in the USA so as to get some more real backing for their dollar investments; and which by the way would also be a great alternative for China to get the US economy going again for the benefit of their own business model.

As I see history playing out its ironic hand housing finance created a perfect storm which forced everyone into the safe harbour of the US treasuries, until it got so crowded there that everyone started swimming again to the house-wrecks.

Viva the President of the European Union!

Sir though I do not agree with his laisser faire attitude towards the climate change I must express my deepest thanks to Vaclav Klaus for giving reason a voice and blaming the “immodest and overconfident politicians playing with the market” for the current economic crisis, “Do not tie the markets – free them” January 7.

His words remind me of those uttered by the Joker (in the name of the free market) in the movie The Dark Knight, 2008. “You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. It's the schemers that put you where you are. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few…” collateralized debt obligations.When I think of a small group of bureaucratic finance nerds in Basel thinking themselves capable of exorcizing risks out of banking, for ever, by cooking up silly formulas of minimum capital requirements for banks based on some vaguely defined risks of default; and thereafter creating a risk information oligopoly empowering the credit rating agencies and which doomed, sooner or later, the world to be guided over a precipice of systemic risks; like what happened with the lousily awarded mortgages to the subprime sector, I cannot but shiver when I hear about giving even more advanced powers to the schemers.

Still… all we need is love!

Sir you argue that “bereft of ideas even after a cataclysm for capitalism that there is a need for “Reinventing the European left” January 6.

In a world where everyone now needs to take some time out and refocus, even you, is it not a bit arrogant to single out just one party as being in need of reinvention?

Also, does “All we need is reinvention” really substitute for that old “All we need is love”… I don’t think so.

No sir, it is not the individual citizens responsibility to help the society to spend itself out of the mess.

Sir you write “Saving the savers is not the priority” January 6 and, in that, you are right. But then you go on saying “This is surely the right time to encourage people to spend, spend, spend” and, unless you are yourself doing that and giving exactly the same advice to your own children, this is a shameful thing to say.

Yes it would be lovely if all consumers by magic fully recovered their confidence in the economy but while the economy is not showing a clear direction of where it is going the individual responsibility of a citizen that a country could be proud of, is to save, save, save… even if not for any other purpose than to have the money to pay, pay, pay for all the taxes that will come.

Franchising is also a valid way of de-leveraging

Sir I read with interest Jonathan Birchall’s report “Borders hopes new chief can improve its story” January 6.

These mega chains, like Borders with 1,000 stores in the US, and that must have driven out of business a lot of small bookstores are clearly a result of an era where financial leverage was king. Perhaps the tide is now turning and so perhaps one financial value creating way of de-leveraging for a Border is to franchise out their operations to 1,000 individual franchise owners. One would at least hope this alternative is considered before there are further store consolidations that could leave us buyers and consumers with no leverage at all.

No way!

Sir Andrew Large as a former financial regulator should be ashamed of his “Central banks must be the debt watchdogs” January 6 by which he wants to dig us even deeper into the hole we’re in.

He wants to construe “the necessary architecture and instruments to produce a more effective response to the build up of systemic pressure” ignoring that this itself could lead up to other systemic risks just as the regulators appointment of the credit rating agencies as their risk watchers led most of the market to focus on what these gorillas were doing and therefore never seeing all that was happening around them.

Let me be absolutely clear central bankers are incapable of scrutinizing systemic risks since that would require them to start scrutinizing themselves as the biggest source of systemic risk.

And what if China buys a million houses in the USA?

Sir David Hale follows a quite plausible story line in his “There is only one alternative to the dollar” January 6 but he arrives to the wrong conclusion. Clearly if the confidence in the dollar drops demand for gold could go up but it is really hard seeing gold reassuming in today’s world its traditional role in backing currencies and many other developments, no matter how crazy, might be in store for us.

For instance what if China decides to buy one million of the actual stock of American houses to better guarantee their somehow shaky dollar exposure and to prop up the US housing market that was a main pillar in a business model that seemed to be working quite well for them?

The original sin was ignoring the purpose of our banks

Sir, John Plender titling the “Originative sin: the future of banking” January 5, has the late John Kenneth Galbraith opining that “finance and innovation were fundamentally incompatible”. What Plender implies is wrong. If anything can be labelled as the original sin it is not the financial innovations but the fact that for some decades now there has been little or no discussion of what is the purpose of our financial system and most especially that of our banks. Of course we expect the banks to be safe mattresses for our savings but that is far from all they are supposed to do and clearly, any financial innovation, should be evaluated with a reference to its purpose.

Just the same Galbraith, in “Money: Whence it came, where it went” (1975), addresses the function of banks in the creation of wealth by speculating on the fact that one of the basic fundamentals of the accelerated growth experienced in the western and south-western parts of the United States during the past century was the existence of an aggressive banking sector working in a relatively unregulated environment. Galbraith mentions that banks opened and closed doors and bankruptcies were frequent, but as a consequence of agile and flexible credit policies, even the banks that failed left a wake of development in their passing. May I ask… what wake of development has the financial sector left lately?

We left the regulation of our banks in the hands of a regulator who only had the safe-mattress purpose on their agenda and that is why the saddest part of this current crisis is the little sustainable development the last boom-bust cycle has produced. All the recent bank regulations created in Basel were oriented towards the goal of avoiding individual banks to fail while completely ignoring the much larger risks that banks would fail to do what we truly expect them to do.

In 2003, during a World Bank risk management - Basel II workshop, I said: “Be careful, when looking for ways of avoiding a bank crisis, you could be inadvertently slowing development. I’ve been sitting here for most of these five days without being able to detect a single formula or word indicating that growth and credits are also a function of bank regulations”

Austrian surgery or Keynesian chemotherapy?

No Sir FT should not get away answering “Is your recession really necessary? January 2009 by painting a simplistic picture of some evil Austrian forces wanting to castigate the world by dragging down the economy into the doldrums of a severe and disciplining recession and an enlightened Englishman who understood that “in a crisis, demand would not necessarily fall back to the sustainable level”. What is happening is much too serious for that.

Our current alternatives are more like having to choose between Austrian surgery and Keynesian chemotherapy. Only as an example I would much prefer to cut out all the financial fatty tissue that was created like by magic when the subprime mortgages moved up to the Triple-A world, than use a general chemotherapy that can leave us so weak with masses of public debt and that could have us fall into a final coma.

Having said that, before any type of intervention, the patient needs to recover the will to live and that depends on us being able to explain to him in a credible way the full extent of his illness and its treatment. As an economic doctor I would start telling the patient about the sacrifices he will have to make, for instance the higher taxes he will have to pay, because the whole story of stimulus packages, tax rebates and expecting rational behaviour modification from the same financial regulators that got us into this mess, sounds too much of a tall tale to inspire any sort of confidence.

If I was Obama I would in the first 100 minutes of my presidency use my political capital to announce a one dollar per gallon of gas tax. That would absolutely sting a lot but that would also help the patient to believe that there is a rational way out and that someone is willing to go down that path.

Certainty is a source of much worse systemic risks than uncertainty

Sir Sheila Dow in “A strong argument for pluralism in economic reasoning” January 2, writes “Predictions in times of particular uncertainty can shift dramatically… with serious consequences”. She is right but let us not forget that times of particular certainty like those when everyone from the regulators, the sophisticated investors and the small investors believed in the credit rating agencies generate even worse systemic risks.

If we cannot guarantee pluralism let us at least combat monism

The central planners´ vendetta.

Sir Chrystia Freeland in her "Fixing the flaw", December 31 proposes as one cause of the current crisis that “perhaps the total discrediting of central planning was one reason the champions of the market developed such an infallibility of their own system”. May I suggest an alternative take, namely that the humiliated central planners decided to avenge their defeat by surreptitiously entering into the reign of the Basel Committee and fouling up capitalism by convincing the bank regulators to empower the credit rating agencies as their commissars of risks. The trick they used was to sell the idea that since the credit rating agencies were private they were true representatives of the market.

Of course, as had to happen with any central planning initiative, sooner or later, the credit rating agencies put up their triple-A signs pointing into the wrong direction and led the world over the precipice of the lousily awarded mortgages to the subprime sector. The central planners are currently laughing their heart out. Boy, what a vendetta!

And which is the ‘real’ market of the Financial Times?

Sir I am sorry to say that as an end of this particular 2008 year editorial “The return of the ‘real’ economy” December 31 is, simply put, bad. You base it on “It is mistaken in seeing finance as unproductive. . . Nor is financial innovation mistaken in principle” and frankly I do not know anyone of importance who would contradict you on this.

That said many areas of finance might in fact be truly unproductive, for instance I harbour serious doubts on the validity of much of the financing of consumption; and much of the financial innovation, although perhaps valid in principle and theory, has resulted in disasters that makes it obvious that we need to reign our tendency to give any innovation the full benefit of doubt.

The Financial Times does a lot better defending the financial sector when it points to the real connections between the financial and the other sectors of the economy but, if that results in a shrinkage of the financial sector so be it, that in itself does not mean it is bad.

Finally your humble acknowledgement that “finance is riddled as it is always has been, with gamblers using other peoples money, chancers taking risks but calling it genius, and worthy people following the crowd into collective insanity” but completely leaving out the regulators who with their excessive empowerment of the credit rating agencies laid all the foundation for this crisis has nothing to do with “Without fear and without favour”. Perhaps the Financial Times needs to reflect a bit more on its own real market.

Breaking up the oligopoly on credit risk information means returning powers to the banks

Sir John Dizard in “For fast relief of the credit markets democratise them” December 30 requests that “Rating agencies and banks should not retain their oligopoly on inside information”. He is right on the rating agencies but not on the banks. To be precise, the only ones who have had an oligopoly in credit risk information are the credit rating agencies. In fact the democratisation process should start by allowing the banks to fully recover their role as credit analysts and which was so diminished when the bank regulators empowered the credit rating agencies to act as their most trustworthy outsourced risk-surveyors.

“If they’re good enough for the Basel Committee they should be good enough for you."

Sir John Kay in “Kudos for the contrarian” December 30, writes well about the difficulties of predicting a crisis but leaves out perhaps the difficulties many institutions like the IMF face when they also have to avoid the risk of turning some of their predictions into self-fulfilled prophecies.

Much more important though than predicting the crisis is alerting to the existence of conditions that could create a crisis, but this is no easy task either. I had no idea from where the current crisis was going to come but I was absolutely certain a huge crisis would appear, sooner or later.

When the Basel Committee as our supra-national bank regulator decided to establish a direct linkage between the opinions of the credit rating agencies and the minimum capital requirements of the banks, they sent out a loud and clear message of “If they’re good enough for us they should be good enough for you”. This excessive empowerment of some very few agencies was doomed to create a mega crisis. The explosion, this time, came when the market was led by some shining triple-A rates over the precipice of the badly awarded mortgages to the subprime sector in the USA.

I warned about it all (even as an Executive Director at the World Bank 2002-2004) but to no avail. Either the credit rating agencies were so important that few wanted to step on their toes; or their sole existence was so comforting that no one wanted to abandon their Nirvana of having someone to believe in. And therein lies the prime difficulties of all contrarians namely that they most often are contrary to the normal human wish and need of having something to believe in.

Erroneous credit ratings were the ignored Black-Swans.

Sir in your “A straitened future for troubled banks” December 30 you rightly lay forward the many of the difficulties in deleveraging. But your analysis would have been more complete if you had acknowledged the fundamental role that financial regulators played in the leveraging process. The Basel Committee set up a system based on the presumption that risks could be measured accurately, always, and allowed some very highly leveraged balance sheets when the risks, among other as measured by the credit agencies, were deemed to be low risks.

The risk that was never accounted for, in other words the real Black-Swan event, was the risk that the credit rating agencies would be mistaken, a risk the regulators should never have ignored.

Regulators crafting plurality? Not likely.

Sir in “Why free markets must be defended”, December 27, you write “What was shocking was the failure of disciplined pluralism” and that now “Financial regulators must shoulder the difficult and technical task of crafting the rules that will ensure that there is no repeat”.

A difficult task indeed, especially considering that it was the financial regulators who exercising some not so transparent powers over the markets, were responsible for putting dampers on plurality, with their creation of some truly mumbo-jumbo minimum capital requirements for the banks and the empowerment of the credit rating agencies.

If you want plurality in the market you need to start by stimulating plurality among regulators. Anyone wanting to defend the free markets but that does not realize how imprisoned they really are, is not an effective defender of the market.

There is a huge difference between poor and insolvent

Sir in “The year the god of finance failed” December 27 you mention as an example of government patronage “the effort to promote home ownership among the insolvent.” That is plainly wrong. Too much importance has indeed been assigned to home-ownership, in general, like the tax deductibility of interest paid on mortgages; and much of those efforts have been destined to help the poor, but no one has on purpose given assistance to the insolvent.

There is a branch of liberal radicalism on the web and that in their opposition to any sort of government intervention try to place the responsibility for this crisis fully on the shoulders of Fannie Mae and alike. The real truth is though that more than loans to insolvent borrowers most of the lousily awarded mortgages to the subprime sector were part of the production of attractive alternatives to investors that capitalized on too easily obtainable triple-A ratings.

The financial system needs to be more than what FT currently wants it to be

Sir in “The year the god of finance failed” December 27 you write “First and most important, finance is the heart of the market economy. It pumps money from those who have it, but do not need it, to those who need it but do not have it.”

Unfortunately, as a consequence of the world not having debated the purpose of the financial system for now some decades; and the financial regulators having just concentrated on lowering the risks of individual bank failures, your prescription seems about right. To me though the role of a financial system should be to move the financial resources to the most productive areas for the society at large, and that is an entirely different proposition.

The Supreme Court should order Obama to stop quitting smoking

Sir I could not agree more with the general tone of Christopher Caldwell’s “No smoke without ire” December 27.

I was a smoker and it took me years to break my habit, or at least not give in to it more, but during my quitting time of about two years, and to the extent that I was unable to write any cohesive ideas on paper, I was an impaired person.

In this respect to think of the president of the most powerful country of the world, in these extremely difficult times, impairing himself just to set an example is about the worst example he could give his country.

Maybe the Supreme Court in exercising their checks and balances should order Obama to smoke a number of cigarettes a day while his presidency last. Or is this an issue for Congress?

Obama will be risking his life. In the line of duty? As a Commander in Chief? You’ve got to be joking!

Uncomfortably some answers are only ours to give.

Sir as a radical of the middle or an extremist of the centre I much agree with Martin Wolf in that “Keynes offers us the best way to think about the crisis” December 24. Having said that and not feeling I should be considered a “liquidationist” I yet believe that a tremendous amount of debris has to be cleared out from the system and that also some extensive tilting of the land is required before we expose our economies to any stimulus Tsunami. Can we bailout the past and still sow the seeds for the future is one of those hard questions that needs to be answered in that “spirit of humility and pragmatism” that Martin Wolf asks for.

On the first page of this same FT on Christmas in Iceland we read “There will be a lot of people who leave this country, just go away. Think of the future here for the children. When they are 95 they will still be paying for this“. Does Keynes have an answer on what to do about that? Probably not! The uncomfortable truth, and which is why most of us wear blinders, is that some answers are only ours to give.

PS. Since Martin Wolf wishes “to see the punishment of financial alchemist who claimed that ever more debt turns economic leas into gold” let me remind him that the prime ingredient in that alchemist formula was that the triple-A ratings were to be true, like the financial regulators believed they were… and therefore the market believed it too.

And what about the midgets of finance?

Sir you list with photos “The fallen giants of finance” December 23. But, what about all those midgets of finance in Basel, namely the financial regulators who thought they could exorcise risks from banks for ever with their utterly silly minimum capital requirements and the appointment of the credit rating agencies as risk overseers and got us into this mess? Should we not publish their names and photos too?

A lot of rain on a parking lot does little good.

Sir Wolfgang Münchau in “Following the Fed cannot save the world”, December 22, rightly presents some grave concerns with respect to “swamping the market with cash” before “restructure and shrink the financial system”.

In the same vein and as a citizen of an oil country accustomed to see liquidity pouring on asphalted parking lots without producing any results I am very concerned that the Obama mega stimulus will not help much unless the ground is better prepared to absorb the humidity. No stimulus in the world will suffice if the market does not believe in a future, and any effort to convince it of the contrary by pouring liquidity on it could only hinder its future take off.

The stimulus package needs to follow a credible story line not compensate for the lack of it.

It is not a question of quality control or knowledge… it is solely about wise prudence

Sir Mr Blaise Ganguin from Standard and Poor’s Ratings Services is in his right to defend his company like he does in “Analysis of S&P’s ‘quality control’ is freely available” December 22. But, even accepting that all he writes is 100% the truth that does not diminish the fact that no matter how good the credit rating agencies are at what they do, it is still plain madness to empower so few with so much power over the market.

In January 2003 in a letter published by FT I wrote “Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic error to be propagated at modern speeds. Friends, please consider that the world is tough enough as it is.”

Well here we are years later facing an enormous financial crisis that will have tragic consequences for hundreds of million people around the world, and where the credit rating agencies triple-As can be identified as having directly provoked 50 Bernard Maddof' losses or more. We are now long overdue returning the rating agencies to where they were before the financial regulators in the Basel Committee super-empowered them.

Obama could run out of time… in seconds.

Sir if Obama in the first seconds of his government is not able to tell a credible story of how the world can put a stop to the current crisis he and we could run out of the precious little time we have available to stop it from developing into something more catastrophic than a serious depression.

Now if I had Obama political capital to spend I would do so by telling the story of a green valley built with taxes on gas and plentiful resources given to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so that they can work night and day on getting us the answers we need in order to develop what currently seems to be the toughest but perhaps the single best route towards energy and climate sustainability.

Simply put, the nanny is not to be trusted.

There is nothing like some triple A ratings awarded to lousy securities and a Bernard Madoff experience to help a new generation of financiers to grow up and learn the hard way that their nanny is not to be trusted.

But it is also amazing to watch a society that has invested billions in paying the best tutors for their brightest to learn now being reduced to placing ads wanting a stricter fräulein… to trust.

And their names are?

Sir as the Financial Times has done Bernie Madoff should indeed be named and shamed. But, what about the naming and shaming of those financial regulators of the Basel Committee who caused immeasurably more damages by having concocted the idea of empowering the credit rating agencies as official guides; and which doomed the world, sooner or later, to follow some triple-A stars over a precipice.

There are indeed many financial issues that are up for long overdue reviews

Sir Christopher Caldwell in “Time for some morality trades” December 20, discusses whether the whole financial system should be up for a moral review. If so may I suggest we start by looking into the whole concept of placing borrowers in special high-interest rates corrals, with the help of tools that are not overly transparent, and then pushing the corralled into an impoverishing anticipation of consumption, all in order to make a profit from financial intermediation. From a societal point of view, without even discussing morality, driving an unnecessary wedge between people does not seem the smartest thing to do.

By coincidence in the same issue Dr. Milford Bateman in “Microfinance’s ‘iron law’ – local economies reduced to poverty” suggest that those lending money for marginal and most often informal entrepreneurial activities are digging the poor deeper in the hole they’re in, since those resources could have been used to finance some much better development ladders. Indeed this possibility and that for the development community must sound as a real shocker, also qualifies the microfinance sector for an urgent moral and practical review.

Since you are anyhow moving towards a clean slate, try a very low fixed mortgage rate.

Sir Niall Ferguson in “The age of obligation” December 19, presents clearly the dilemma between investing blood-sweat-tears and public indebtedness in trying to defend and build upon what exists or calling it quits and starting from scratch. It is a politically unsolvable dilemma and only time will tell. That said since no one is even talking about the subject of all the taxes that would be required to pay for defending what exists, at this moment I would have to bet on that we will see a clean slate sooner or later.

To have a chance to transition to the future without incurring in new public debt that will make the future unbearable substantial real haircuts have to be made in the rest of the economy and the faster and deeper the better since that leaves more room for the ok it hurt but now at least it is over feeling that is a prerequisite for all belief in a better future.

What would I do? With respect to the mortgages I would analyze the possibility of imposing by decree a very low fix interest rate on all outstanding mortgages in the US; and this because I believe that in that unfair and unsustainable idea that you could finance anything to anyone as long as the high rates that some were willing to pay were enough to compensate the losses of those not capable of repaying, lies much of the original cause for this crisis.

The above would give millions of lousy mortgages more chance of being duly serviced and perhaps even make the market value of these mortgages higher than what their current impossible-to-pay value are. In order to compensate those younger generations that have no houses, the same kind of financial facilities should be extended to anyone buying a repossessed house, at 70% of its previous price and that makes a 15% down payment. Just? No! But there is also little justice in public debt forgiveness.

Those who felt for Madoff just trusted the green lights!

Sir John Gapper enters the world of incredulity and gullibility trying to explain the Bernie Madoff affair in “Wall Street insiders and fool’s gold” December 18.

Gapper completely forgets to mention that this incident occurred in a time zone when the financial expert consensus was that risk could be diversified away into the arms of those who could handle the risks, with little or nothing said about who these blokes might be; and the financial regulators, the supreme authorities, committed the most extreme act of incredulity and gullibility of empowering the credit rating agencies… and then these officially appointed masters of the risk lured away trillions into the swampland of the badly awarded mortgages to the subprime sector.

Comparatively speaking, in these times, asking why people put their trust in Madoff is more like asking someone who has been overrun by a car why he trusted the green light.

Mr. Gapper, if “with hindsight the whole affair seems deeply implausible” start by asking yourself why you believed that the credit rating agencies could save the world from “insiders and fool’s gold” and, if you did not gullibly believe so… why did you not speak out?

Have your pick Bernanke, deflation or inflation, as long as you make it brief

Sir in “‘Helicopter Ben’ confronts the challenge of a lifetime” Martin Wolf, December 17, describes the very real dilemma of having to choose between ruthless deflation and ruthless inflation. The best thing to do in such circumstances is to stop thinking about how to get back to where we were and start thinking on where we want to be tomorrow. For instance in the case of our commercial banks it would be great if for a change we start thinking about what is their purpose; and we also need to remember that we have a climate change crisis proceeding simultaneously and where we won’t even have the choice of picking between deflation or inflation.

Also since in reality neither deflation nor inflation are bad things per se, if they occur instantaneously and do not prolong themselves in time, we should perhaps concentrate more on finding ways to clear out all irreversible losses instead of trying to hide them. For instance in the case of the US automobile industry it must be obvious that any infusion of fresh public funds should only happen after its restructuring.

Martin Wolf suspects “the result will ultimately not be deflation but unexpectedly high inflation, though probably many years hence” and I am not so sure of his timeframe. If markets start believing that the US is going all out for inflation, a lack of confidence, propagated at modern speeds, could bring us hyper-inflation in days or hours.

The world lost confidence because never before had it been told to trust some few so much and been so let down. Let us now rebuild that trust that allows us to wake up and feel like singing “Oh it’s a wonderful morning!”

FT’s vision seems somewhat failing too

Sir in your special edition of “How gamblers broke the bank”, December 16, you make a reference to the Financial Times “groundbreaking reporting on the credit rating agencies”. For someone who has written about 200 letters to the Financial Times on the subject of the credit rating agencies and most of these complaining about how the FT was understating their responsibility and of those who empowered them a guides on risk leading us to this mother of all financial crisis, I would be interested in understanding better what “groundbreaking” signifies to you.

On the contrary may I ask where were FT and all the "world's most influential economists" when they were needed to alert that allowing the financial regulators to impose the credit rating agencies on the markets was pure madness since "Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic errors, about to be propagated at modern speeds"? The last quote is from a letter published in FT on May 11, 2003 and written by someone unfortunately considered by FT not sufficiently influential, namely me.

Between January 2003 and September 2006, out of 138 letters to the editor you published 15. But then you censored me, and of the next 635 letters you published none, and the only explanation provided was that I wrote too many letters. In this respect I submit that it is not only the economic forecasters’ vision that is failing but yours as well, as a consequence of you having decided ex-ante who you want to read.

How will the fines from Siemens be distributed?

Sir Daniel Schäfer reports on December 16 that Siemens has to pay $1.4bn in fines to US and German authorities in order to settle bribery inquiries in the United States and Germany related to Venezuela, Argentina, Iraq, Israel, Russia and Bangladesh. How much of these fines will the real victims, the citizens of those countries that were the object of the bribery receive and how will these be distributed?

A corruption of a third kind?

Is now the US public sector falling for teaser rates?

Sir Ricardo Hausmann writes that “The crisis gives America new financial power” December 16, and though there is no doubt that is true, for the time being, we must also be clear that these powers derive mostly from the fact that the world is desperately seeking for a safe haven in this financial turmoil. To this effect the US faces now the extremely difficult balancing act of trying to remain a safe haven while allowing access to all. Let us not forget that the safest of havens can turn into a death-trap if overcrowded.

In this respect I am concerned that too little consideration is given to the maturity profile of the US debt since one would preferably like to minimize the risk of all wanting to leave simultaneously. When last week I ask a prominent US lady economist about this she mentioned that for her this was not of a major problem since the US debt markets are very deep and liquid. She might be right but, unfortunately, we have lately had enough of deep and liquid markets drying up overnight.

As I see it, the US should be issuing a very sizable portion of long term debt, 30 years so as to make sure that many anchor deep inside the haven. Instead we hear about the issuance of short term treasury paper to buy up long term bonds, so as to bring down the long term rates in order to help the mortgage sector. After such a recent mishap with the teaser rates to the mortgage sector… is now the US public sector falling for these?

Knowing the purpose of our banks is never redundant.

Sir Tony Jackson begins his “Banks’ crisis of identity leaves depositor in trauma”, December 15, asking “What are banks for?” and adding the comment “In normal times the question would seem redundant”.

The question is indeed valid, but not at all redundant, since even in the most normal of normal times, one would have hoped that our bank regulators should have had to answer it, to all of us, before they regulate. They did not!

One of the worst things with the current crisis is the total absence of a “was it at least worth it?” and this is a direct consequence from not having discussed, in any way shape or form, for many decades, the exact question Tony Jackson poses, namely “What are banks for?”

When we allow regulators to regulate according to their whims we deserve what we get. In this case the regulators were allowed to play out their bedroom fantasies of a world with no bank-failures and for which they implanted a sort of ridiculous set of minimum capital requirements based on some vaguely defined risks of default, and then empowered the credit rating agencies to measure those vaguely defined risk.

For starters that for a society some default risks are worth taking while others are not, was a consideration that did not even cross the regulators minds.

Support the real world and not to the virtual world.

Not long ago web-navigators were buying real estate in virtual cities. Great fun, but of course no one would dare to plea for a bail-out in order to cover for any losses sustained there. But, down here, on the earth, there are currently many investors in securities with very similar virtual characteristics that shamelessly ask for help. We must learn to ignore their pleas not because we do not want to help them but because we cannot afford to help them.

Sir Joseph Stiglitz comment “Chapter 11 is the right road for America’s carmakers” December 12 is correct and timely. The US has enough resources to retool and sustain its automobile industry, after a much needed restructuring, but not enough to maintain what currently exists and, if they tried to do so that could provoke a significant loss of confidence in the dollar. In this horrendous crisis the US, like all others, is better off playing on its real strengths than trying to maintain vivid the illusions of so many virtual realities.

Since Stiglitz also reminds us of the many widows and orphans that will need real and concrete assistance and not just the illusions of a trickle down on them somehow-somewhere I would similarly like to remind all pf the sobering fact that our current was not caused by speculative investments but by pure triple-A widows and orphan stuff.

But what are Britain’s banks to do for Britain

Sir Martin Wolf “What to do with Britain’s banks”, December 12, is evidence that the most immediate task at hands for the regulators who “represent the interest of these risk-bearers of last resort” should be to start giving thoughts on what Britain’s banks should do for Britain.

Ironically the current bank regulations fabricated by the Basel Committee had the sole purpose of avoiding bank failures, and which is why the regulators imposed minimum capital requirements based on vaguely defined risks of default and empowered the credit rating agencies to measure these risks, and we see were all that nonsense got us. The worst part of this financial nightmare turned reality is that most countries have so little to show for it.

An explosion of public and consumer debt, as if we all had placed a reverse mortgage on the world, is nothing to write home about. Our worst risk now is that the regulators in Basel and many influential opinion makers with them are incapable of understanding that the purpose of our banks is really not to avoid risks but to take the right risks on behalf of society since those are the only risks taxpayers could be asked to pay for.

CDS on US public debt is more of a toy gun.

Sir Eric De Keuleneer worries that a Dr. Strangelove could set out to destroy our world with credit default swaps (CDS) on US debt “Tomorrow could bring a new threat” December 12. This is not so these CDS are just toy guns.

Any problem with the US debt will show up as inflationary expectations in the required interest rates since all it currently takes to defuse a CDS on US debt is some paper and ink, printing dollars. As I have written to you earlier, November 21, Dr. Strangelove possesses much real mass destructive power when he rides on the credit ratings, and which is why perhaps a more cautious regulator would request a security clearance for all the individual credit risk raters.

Having said that, in today’s nervous financial climate, even a toy gun could produce panic.

A debt’s maturity profile might be much more important than its amount.

Sir I do know how to interpret a Britney Spear “oops” but I hope it does not carry the same meaning for Martin Wolf “The eurozone depends on a strong American recovery” December 10. If indeed Wolf is now surprised by the existence of European sovereign credit risks then he has clearly been writing much too close to the trees and needs urgently to step back so as to get a better look at the forests.

Having said that what I really wanted to comment on is when Wolf writes “It is possible to imagine a ´sudden stop´ on higher risk sovereigns bonds. That would force the debt to become short-term – a classic route to a crisis” and this is clearly another very real risk. In this respect, an insistence by the US Treasury to try to collect on the benefits that a drop in long term rates could have reviving the housing market, by buying back longer term bonds and as a consequence shortening the maturity profile of the US public debt, is exposing the US, and us, to some very dangerous risks.

Law, yes, interference, no

Sir Gideon Rachman quotes Jacques Attali, an advisor to President Sarkozy of France saying “the core of the financial markets is that we have global markets and no global rule of law”, “And now for a world government” December 9.

Yes surely we need more global rule of law but while legislating for the globe let us be very clear on the differences between law and interference. The current financial crisis was caused primarily by the financial regulators in Basel interfering with the markets by giving unlimited siren powers to the credit rating agencies without tying us all up to the mast or plugging our ears with beeswax, regulators included.

Let the American motorist pays 50 cents per gallon of gas for new equity in their automobile industry

Sir is Clive Crook panicking? It is hard to draw a different conclusion from his “A question of first things first” December 8. Of course we need some fiscal stimulus and of course we should not procrastinate getting it out on the street… but what is wrong about thinking on the future in terms of what the stimulus should stimulate and what not, and about how to pay for it all?.

The truth is the sooner the market gets a feel for the full circle, “this is what we spend and this is how we pay for it”, in ways that make sense, the faster it will regain the confidence it needs.

For instance I am proposing that the American motorists subscribe and pay for fresh equity in their automotive industry with 50 cents per gallon of gas, as a tax. That should help to raise more than 70 billion dollars a year to take care of the current problems of their industry and finance the green retooling they must embark on. If at the end of the exercise the equity is not worth what the motorists paid, it is still only right that those who drive should primarily carry the burden of rescuing the automobile sector.

Should the credit raters undergo a security clearance?

Sir, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Pablo Triana, “Bystanders to this financial crisis were many” December 8, are right in that we need to extract more accountability from the experts and from those that showed themselves incapable of questioning the experts. And, now and again, a please-return-your-Nobel-Prize back does not have to be so bad for the Nobel Prize either. That said I do not share in the extremisms like that of retiring “Value-at-Risk” books from the shelves” especially because those are exactly the books that now need to be reread so that we can learn from a better understanding of What-Was-Really-at-Risk.

Also, let us not look at this financial crisis as created only by financial scientists gone mad. The financial regulators are also to blame. Not only did they introduce minimum capital requirements for banks based on their own subjective interpretation of what risk means and without giving much thought on how that would affect the whole system but they also empowered some few credit rating agencies to be the official guides on risks which, as we have seen, was a magnificent act of pure madness.

Let me here ask the question that perhaps best helps to place the whole issue of the credit rating agencies in its real perspective. Since these agencies have been given so immense powers that if misused could turn them into dangerous weapons of mass destruction capable of inflicting big sufferings on humanity… should then the individual credit raters have to undergo a security clearance? Of course I do not imply any planned wrong doings, that I swear, but I guess you have to agree with me that this is at least great stuff for nail-biting movies.

Purposeless human sacrifices.

Sir you are absolutely right saying that “Zimbabwe needs a political solution” December 8 and which should be nothing short of Mugabe’s resignation. The current sufferings in Zimbabwe, which have nothing to do with religious or cultural traditions but just with the mad ineptitude of an autocrat that wants to hang on to power no matter what, are not the kind of offerings that could be justified on the sovereignty altar of any country. And most of the African leaders know it, which makes the inaction of so many of them even worse.

While an Executive Director at the World Bank 2002-2004 I gave my unlimited and heartfelt support to the African countries in the issue of more voice to them and more freedom to apply their own criteria and country systems. Today I pray all Africa makes it very clear that a Mugabe represent neither an African voice nor an African country system

More toughness is needed in Basel in order to get bankers moving instead of the Congress.

Sir I much appreciated Peter Thal Larsen’s “Withdrawal unavailable” December 6. At long last someone has given enough importance to how minimum capital requirements imposed by the Basel Committee is a constrain on new banking business, among other because they force the banks first to dry up any already spilled milk. Official efforts to get the bank credit moving should of course start with introducing modifications of those capital requirements, unfortunately our so risk adverse regulator wimps do not even dare to enter that terrain. When the going gets tough we need to call in the tough!

Instead of having a Congress requests such ridiculous things like the senior management of the automotive industry driving to Washington in order to access new credit, the Congress should be asking the banks about what they would need to start putting that kind of automotive risk on their books again.

Finally, when Thal Larsen quotes Robert Self of Credit Suisse saying that the appetite for yields drove a lot of demand for mortgage backed securities, this is just not so. The yields themselves were nothing to write home about and the risk-reward ratio was deemed to be attractive only because these securities had triple-A ratings. Without these ratings no one, and I mean no one, would have purchased these securities. Moreover without those triple-A ratings we would not even be in this crisis.

Death penalty for corruption!

Sir with respect to "Japan halts aid for Vietnam after bribe case" by Tim Johnston and Mure Dickie December 6, are you aware that there is death-penalty in Vietnam for corruption? Below what I wrote when visiting Vietnam as an Executive Director of the World Bank in 2003 (Voice and Noise, 2006)

Death penalty for corruption!

What does it really mean to have a death penalty for corruption—and still they tell you that corruption is rampant everywhere? In effectiveness, how does it compare to OECD's recent huge step forward of not allowing tax deductibility of corruption payments any longer? Are there any anticorruption patches to be found that might make it easier to break the bribery habit? Or do you have to go cold turkey?

Do not worry it looks like they are just staging it! Help!

Sir Sir Samuel Brittan clearly rapped all of us who dare to ask “how we are going to pay for it?” over our knuckles, “A framework for economic stability” December 5. We do not deserve it. In a world where the British Pound should have imprinted “In the British Taxpayer We Trust”, since that is all it has backing it, not asking the question could frighten away all economic stability. The quoted Harold Macmillan “Whatever the temporary difficulties from trying to run too fast, if we stand still, we are lost” might have benefited from having much less darkness around him than what exists now.

Having said that, Sir Brittan needs not to be overly concerned with any excessive prudence. In the US, all similar discussions on how to pay for it, and the screaming about the implications for the taxpayers, anyhow all end up with new tax-rebates being given.

Finally on Brittan’s quoting Friedman’s recipes for fiscal stability, how strange he did not comment on the absence in them of the regressive VAT.

If the game is over, aren’t we being better off starting anew?

Sir Martin Wolf in “Global imbalances threaten the survival of liberal trade”, December 3, tells us that savers must turn into spenders and spenders into savers, in order for all to balance out and allow us to keep on playing the same game, or we “must prepare for dire results.”

Unfortunately the fact that it all sounds so reasonable, does not make it one iota more possible to achieve, especially considering that in order for the rebalancing act to produce the desirable effects, the new savers would have to save in an already harsher environment and the new spenders would have to take on new-debt instead of consuming their old savings that have already been invested in somebody else’s past spending.

And so the real question is whether we believe there is sufficient willingness to work down the global imbalances and therefore insist on playing a game that might already be irreversible over, and which to the suffering that must ensue will only add the fastidiousness of a useless prolongation; or we call it quits, honour the winner, ceremoniously, with a trophy, and begin a fresh new game.

If I were young, healthy and reasonably capable there is no question that I would choose to start afresh and have the crisis behind me, especially if for the next round we could agree upon some changes in the rules; like the imposition of immense carbon taxes that would help us all to avoid environmental disasters. For all of the rest the dwindling hopes of a le déluge, après mois, seem more valid.

Could the world hope to be able to reach a peaceful start-afresh? Well that is the real challenge for a truly new and much improved Bretton Woods.

Sir this reasoning also agrees with your “Not a time for hoarding bullets” December 3. If we are going to be buried under a déluge we might as well have a full go at it since if even if we fail this could perhaps help to get it over faster, while enjoying some half-decent music.

Those cows trusted us!

Sir Peter Schwartz in “Right question that has several possible answers” December 2, rephrases the Queen’s question of “Why did nobody see this coming?” into a “What would it take to make decision-makers both believe and act?”

Absolutely the most valuable lesson we could take out of the current mess is to get a better understanding of why people can turn blind and deaf when they are warned on impending disasters.

In this particular case I would like to go back even a decade or so to ask the regulators of how come they in Basel could come up with such a crazy idea of sending out in the financial markets their City Slickers (1991), the credit rating agencies, knowing well these would, sooner or later, cause a stampede; and how come they still believe they could keep on using them without an even worse stampede ensuing in the future?

I can still hear one of the slickers saying “Those cows trusted us!

Et tu Britain?

Sir for someone who has had to live with my state of Venezuela completely out of control and who has often mentioned that if I had to reincarnate elsewhere I hope it would be in Britain, Philip Stephens “British police, and the state are out of control” December 2, is a hard blow. Is there nowhere where the governments are for the people and not for the governments?

We now have to think harder about what we can afford?

Sir Jeremy Rifkin writes that the “Sunset carmakers should look to a new dawn”, December 2 and clearly, if they don’t, they are crazy, especially since different to others trapped in a sunset industry the carmakers do not seem to have a good cash-flow to milk; in fact their current cash flow, they tell us, is the taxpayer.

That said and even though the world cannot because of concerns with energy security and the environment afford to play with the combustion engine along traditional ways, neither can it afford to do so in any new green way that comes along, most specially after being hit so hard by the current financial crisis.

In this respect to read about our homes converted into “positive power plants” and us as “participants in the energy market” in a “new era of ‘distributed capitalism’” in pure Jetsons’ style makes one shiver. It is good to be a visionary but it is also good to walk before running. For instance… can we afford to remain so choosy that we do not even mention the nuclear energy?

Europe has the sovereign right to guard its interests even when doing it stupidly.

Sir Paul J. Davies and Nikki Tait report “Concern over Brussels rating agencies plan”, December 1. What can one say? If a Hugo Chávez feels he needs a Banco del Sur to make a difference in this world why should not Europe want to have their Credit Rating Agency de Europa? And, with respect to that ´This introduces an extra-territorial approach and will be seen as protectionism” why should Europe also not have the right to try their best to see that the next subprime swampland where the credit rating agencies will surely take us again, sooner or later, lies not in California but in old Europe?

If Europe accepts the possibility that the credit rating agencies do introduce a bias is that in itself not a prime reason for asking the Basel Committee to eliminate completely the role of the credit rating agencies in setting the minimum capital requirements for the banks?