Basel Committee’s bank regulations have empowered populist demagogues everywhere.
The world needs to understand how Basel Committee’s bank regulations have empowered populist demagogues of all shape, color or form, everywhere.
Sir, I refer to Martin Wolf’s “The hard task of exiting the populist trap” Financial Times, October 22, 2025.
Mr. Wolf writes: “We live in an age of populist demagogues. This is not a new phenomenon. Plato used the word “demagogue” in his critique of democracy in The Republic. He was correct that demagogy is the Achilles heel of democracy… How damaging is illustrated by the fate of Argentina, a country that has been plagued by populism since the rule of Hipólito Irigoyen in 1916.”
Sir, if the Basel Committee’s “We know enough about risks and so to make your banks safe, we give you our risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements”, is not a pure example of populist demagoguery, what is?
And with it, 1988, they de facto decreed that the populists/bureaucrats governing know better what to do with public debt, for which repayment they’re not personally responsible for, than the farmers, small businesses and entrepreneurs do with their bank loans.
Wouldn't Argentina’s Juan Domingo Peron have loved it? Of course, he would.
Sir, I ask, is that not a trap into which most of the world has fallen into? Anyone truly wanting to help Milei should look at it as a mutual problem and not one of which Argentina is supposed to climb out from on their own.
FT could be helpful if it begins to explain, without fear and without favour, how much Basel regulations distort the allocation of bank credit and with it, de facto, central banks’ monetary policies.
Is it not a good time for that? Look at what is happening to all other economies, UK included.
@PerKurowski
Posts
