Any recklessness of bankers is by far surpassed by that of their current regulators.

Sir, Brooke Masters writes: “Reckless bankers caused the financial crisis by running their businesses without a care for the long term consequences”, “Bankers will fail to win back trust with tragedy analogies” December 13.

That is reckless reporting.

Regulators, by allowing banks to leverage 50 times and more their equity with assets perceived as “absolutely safe”, while at the same time ordering a much lower leverage for assets perceived as “risky”, caused the crisis and, by not acknowledging their mistake, and thereby hindering bank credit from flowing to where it can be most productive, keeps us submerged into it.

That was indeed reckless behavior, and bank regulators did it by not caring one iota about any long-term consequences… as can easily be evidenced by the fact that they have not even defined what the purpose of our banking system is.

“I can’t breathe!” If with respect to finance somebody has the right to utter that, that is the real economy… for which risk-taking is oxygen.

Sir, I protest FT for also failing to indict bank regulators, for causing our economies to stall and fall. (Is it that you automatically must side with the police?)