December 16, 2008

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.