Greece should be ashamed of presenting public sector pensions as a deal breaker, instead of youth unemployment.

Peter Spiegel and Kerin Hope report on FT’s front page that: “Mr Tsipras insisted he would continue to resist the cuts to public sector pensions demanded by creditors” June 18.

Sir, if I was a young unemployed Greek, I would go mad if I saw that the point of honor for my government, in order to negotiate or not with its creditors was the payment of the pensions of the public sector. I don’t understand how it can get away with this… or have all young Greek with any initiative already left Greece.

If I was Tsipras the following is the point I would make… or the line I would draw.

Europe, our bank regulators in the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, all picked by you and none by Greece, decided that banks needed to hold much less capital when lending to our government, than for instance when lending to any unrated European SME.

And that meant that banks could leverage their equity and the support they got from the society much more when lending to our government than for instance when lending to any unrated European SME.

And that meant that banks could earn much higher risk adjusted returns on their equity when lending to our government than for instance when lending to any unrated European SME.

And so of course banks lent too much to our governments and too little to our SMEs.

If Greece wants to get out of its current predicament, and to be able to offer its youth good employments, these stupid risk adverse regulations must be reversed.

But that takes a lot of bank capital and we need you to helps us re-capitalize our banks. By the way you have the same problem with your banks.

@PerKurowski