But bad information was leveraged even more, sort of a million to one

Sir, John Plender writes in Capital in convulsion about “toxic assets” and that “allowing investment banks to be leveraged to the tune of 30:1 is like Russian roulette with five out of the six chambers loaded”, September 20. Yes, but let us not ignore that most of the toxicity has less to do with the assets as such and more with the lack of understanding of them; and that it was the financial regulators that leveraged, sort of a million to one, the impact of bad information flows, and effectively turned the credit rating agencies into single chambered guns loaded with nuclear devices.