June 08, 2013

Why does Ms. Tett value risk-taking here, but not there?

Sir, Gillian Tett describes how her life was saved by some daring physicians in Singapore, “How Singapore remains healthy” June 8. She also comments that, had she’d been in the USA, because of litigation risks, the doctors might perhaps not have dared to performed a risky “antibiotic gamble”.

How strange then that she has not really understood, or wants to accept, that bank regulators should not, as they do now, favor risk-avoidance, to such a degree that what is safe might become risky, while discriminating against what is perceived as risky, even if those are the ones who, living on the margins of the real economy, we most need to have access to bank credit in fair and efficient terms. Might there be an anthropological explanation for it?