Gillian Tett again mingles with the aristocracy of finance in Davos, while blithely ignoring the commoners

An entrepreneur or a small or medium sized business, if there were no bank regulations could have been offered a loan $400.000 loan at 7%, but now, only because they are regulated with Basel Committee criteria, the banks will only offer $200.000 at 10%.

But why should Gillian Tett care about the commoner, “The Risky” when she once again can enjoy being surrounded in Davos by the financial aristocracy “The Infallible” and “The Regulators”? Frankly she should be ashamed of herself writing “Davos elite take note: the public don’t trust you” January 26 when she, as a journalist in one of the most important financial papers, has so blithely ignored the topic of how regulators, without explaining themselves, and much less being held accountable to anyone for what they do, distort and discriminate.

Let me remind her again that the Mario Draghi that now presides her European Central Bank is the same regulator who presiding the Financial Stability Board thought, and perhaps he even still thinks so, that it was perfectly correct to allow a bank to leverage its equity 62.5 times to 1 when lending to Greece, but only 12.5 times to 1 when lending to “The Risky”.