“If you see something say something”. Yes, but it’s not easy to be a whistleblower on our too inept bank regulators.
Sir, never ever has a bank crisis of any important magnitude resulted from excessive exposures to something that was perceived as risky when placed on the balance sheets of banks.
These have always resulted from unexpected events, like major devaluations, criminal behavior or excessive exposures to something that was perceived as safe when incorporated in the balance sheets of banks but that ex post turned out to be risky.
So when bank regulators, like with their Basel II of 2004 set the risk weights for what is rated AAA at 20%, and that of the below BB- rated at 150%, then this is a too serious clue of them not knowing what they’re doing.
And the above is far from being their only mistake or the only proof of that.
I have been shouting my lungs out about this basically since 1997, but it is very difficult for an ordinary citizen, even for someone who for some years was an Executive Director at the World Bank, to have someone to listen to him, when he holds that our supposed expert bank regulators left a bomb in our real economy.
PS. I will send the above letter to as many editors I can.
Financial Times
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
Svenska Dagbladet
The Economist
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