July 30, 2014

FT, Sir I shiver at the thought of what you would think to be “not-light-touch” bank regulations.

Sir, I refer to your “Lloyds and lessons from past scandals” July 30.

Sir we have bank regulators who told the bank: “Here you have ultra low capital requirements for whatever is perceived ex ante as absolutely safe, so that you can make ultra high returns on your equity financing that, and so that you stay away from financing those risky SMEs and entrepreneurs, even though these need and could do the most good with bank credit”.

In other words… the mother of all capital controls.

And in “Lloyds and lessons from past scandals”, July 30, you refer to this as “the ‘light touch’ regulation that characterized the pre-crunch period”? I shiver at the thought of what you would call firm handed regulations.

PS. I was recently censored, in Venezuela. But you know Sir, that is not the first time… so thanks for the preparation :-)