Andy Haldane, I am an economist too, but I can still not make head or tails out of your bank regulations. Please enlighten me with BoE’s “EconoMe”!

Sir, Chris Giles writes that Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane argues that economists must work harder to help the public understand and accept their message. “If economics or economic policy is elitist and inaccessible to most people, it is not doing its job,” he said. “Economics should be more accessible” November 28.

Absolutely! So please could Haldane explain to me why regulators want banks to hold the most capital for when something perceived risky turns out risky, when it is when something ex ante perceived as very safe ex post turns out to be very risky, that one really would like banks to have the most of it?

The risk weighted capital requirements allow banks to leverage differently different assets, and thereby allow banks to earn different risk adjusted returns on equity on different assets, must distort the allocation of bank credit to the real economy. Some, like for instance “risky” entrepreneurs are paying with less access to credit for the regulators favoring “safe sovereign, AAArisktocracy and house financing. That must not be helpful for creating new jobs. Am I wrong? If am not, why does this seem to be of no concern to regulators?

And talking about favoring, who authorized the economists to suddenly take upon themselves to decide that the risk weight of the sovereign was 0% and that of citizens 100%? Is that not just outrageous statism? Has that not caused governments getting credit at much lower rates that they would otherwise have gotten? Has that not caused governments to take on much more debt than they would otherwise have been able to do?

If Haldane does not know the answers to these questions perhaps he can ask Mark Carney, Mario Draghi, Jaime Caruana or Stefan Ingves.

And if those elite experts can’t provide him with a satisfactory answer, perhaps he should sit down and listen to me. I as one economist to another would willingly explain to him the regulatory lunacy he is involved with. For a first session of that, Haldane could prepare reading THIS:

PS. And at FT you are all also cordially invited. Since you have mostly ignored, and even hushed up my arguments, I know that if Haldane proves me wrong, you will all feel tremendously alleviated.

@PerKurowski