And… what about the folly of a generation of Editors who did not question sufficiently?

Sir, you are the Financial Times, and in “Central banks: a survival guide” September 19, you dare, without blushing, refer to the “follies of a generation of irresponsible financiers”? Where does that leave you? Did you “without fear and without favour” ask, timely, the questions that needed to be asked? Like, is it not an arrogant folly to believe risks can be measured, so completely that thereafter you can place our global financial risk surveillance in the hands of some few credit rating agencies without concentrating the risks?

When I started my TeaWithFT.blogspot.com it was because I felt that the Financial Times “also need some checks-and-balances, of those that do not always have to be approved by the Editor”. I had no idea how right I was… though when I was told that in order for my letters to be published I should not send too many, I started to suspect it.

Sir, the current generation of financiers are not more or less responsible than past generations of financiers… they just got swooped up in some the crazy and uncontested notions of their times. In the words of Albert Einstein “It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom”.