Let our bankers become bankers again.

Sir Mohamed El-Erian says “We have to bring the banking sector back to life” January 21, because “Banks play an important role in any economy…efficiently channelling funds to productive uses”, and I believe he is even more right than he is aware of.

For years I have been arguing that our banks need to rescue the role they should play in the economy and which they lost when they were ordered by means of the minimum capital requirements based exclusively on risks, imposed on them by the regulatory authorities in Basel, to be risk-adverse entities and basically automated arbitrators trying to capture whatever spread existed between what the market was requiring in interest rates and what it should charge in accordance to the credit rating agencies opinions on the inherent risks.

Yes, now, more than ever, we need our bankers to become bankers again, and to regain the capacity of looking their clients in their eyes so as to explore on behalf of the society all the avenues that exist for the creation of decent jobs and sustainable economic growth. It is absolutely not too “late to stop banks becoming utilities”; for the simple reason that we cannot afford to let them.