Let us make good and permanent use of our disorientation.

Sir Gillian Tett writes that “Gridlock and panic follow loss of compass” September 19 and wants to know “how to end the disorientation”. As I see it though our current problems derives more from the regulators having imposed too much orientation believing themselves and making the markets to believe that a financial risk compass was just like any other compass.

In this respect we should perhaps welcome our disorientation and use it to diminish dramatically the role of the credit rating agencies, so that we do not follow them next time around over a precipice even more dangerous than that of the lousily awarded subprime mortgages.