March 21, 2015

Creativity needs a chair in any mutual admiration club to somewhat dent any ongoing groupthink

Sir I agree with Gillian Tett in that “A degree of creativity should be on the college curriculum” March 21. But that must also include making sure that creativity has a chair wherever important decisions are taken.

I say it again… had there for instance been some genuine representation in the Basel Committee of historians, and why not of anthropologists, these would have questioned the wisdom of the risk-weighted equity requirements for banks that have so completely distorted the allocation of bank credit to the real economy.

At least the chance of having someone able to quote Mark Twain in that “bankers are those who lend you the umbrella when the sun shines and want to take it away as soon as it looks like it is going to rain” could have given those central-banker-regulators some second thoughts, while they were doing their groupthink, in their cozy mutual admiration club.

@PerKurowski