August 26, 2015

If John Kay truly believes in liberal education, he should help question the decisions of the job-specific trained.

Sir, John Kay writes: “the capacities to think critically, judge numbers, compose prose and observe carefully — the capacities that education can and should develop — will be as useful then as they are today” “The timeless benefits of a liberal education” August 26.

Indeed but that requires that the capacity of thinking critically gets a chance to be heard by those who certify having job-specific skills. And for that to happen those who write newspaper columns have a very special role in forwarding the observations.

Here just one example: Bank regulators, with supposedly many job specific skills, decided for instance that assets rated BB- present immensely more possibilities of generating unexpected losses than assets rated AAA. And as a consequence they require banks to hold much more capital against BB- assets than against AAA assets.

And there are freethinkers like me who holds that to be utter nonsense, because clearly the riskier an asset is perceived, by definition the less are its possibilities to generate unexpected losses. 

But, can I get help to forward this and many other similar observations on our current bank regulations? No - because journalists clearly believe much more in the regulators' job specific skills than in any liberal education and critical thinking. Is it not so Mr. Kay?

@PerKurowski