FT, Western liberalism might not be obsolete but it sure isn’t what it was a couple of decades ago.

Sir, with respect to Vladimir Putin’s recent claim — “that liberalism is obsolete” you opine his “triumphalism is misplaced. Not all of liberalism is under threat. The superiority of private enterprise and free markets — at least within individual nations — in creating wealth is no longer seriously challenged.” “No, Mr Putin, western liberalism is not obsolete” June 29.

You are only partly right, because nowadays-Western liberalism is not what it was. 

When regulators allow those that are perceived, decreed or concocted as safe, to be able to offer their risk-adjusted interest rates to banks leveraged many times more than those perceived as risky, as has been the case since 1988, that has absolutely nothing to do with free markets.

And assigning for the risk weighted bank capital requirements a 0% risk weight to sovereigns, and one of 100% to citizens, has nothing to do with “superiority of private enterprise” either. Those risk weights de facto imply that bureaucrats know better what to do with bank credit they are not personally liable for, than private sector entrepreneurs, and that has much more to do with statist a la Putin regimes.

@PerKurowski