Can we get us some good and courageous technocrats please!

Sir, Tony Barber writes “Enter the technocrats” November 12, and that could be good unless of course it is the failed technocrats who are entering… and frankly most of the European and American technocracy, in the area of finance, have failed miserably. 

Technocrats who never understood, and still fail to understand, that the risk-weights used for determining the capital requirements for banks that based on ex-ante perceived risk of default, were layered on top of the banker’ own risk-weights, which drove the banks to create dangerously high exposures to what is officially perceived as “not-risky”, are not worthy being called technocrats… no matter how revered they are in Brussels. 

At this time, when we all need the risk-takers to work for us, they are being choked by the lack of access to bank credit… just because these failed technocrats believe them to be risky. Come on, these were the regulators who believed sovereigns to be safe! Are we still supposed to blindly follow their courageous calls for entering their land of no-risks? 

These wimpy technocrats –bureaucrats, who demonstrated even less courage than many politicians, and who are in fact more responsible that most politicians for this crisis, do not seem to be the leaders we now need!