August 07, 2012

Does Mario Draghi really have what it takes?

Sir, you hold that “risk managers of banks… failed to foresee the unsustainability of the US mortgage market – the cause of the crisis”, “The Euro still has a mountain to climb” August 7. Yes, they should have, but that is mainly because they should have distrusted their regulators. 

Bank regulators, among them FT´s hero, Mario Draghi, should have understood that you just do not allow banks to leverage their equity 62.5 times, when for instance investing in securities backed by mortgages to the subprime sector only because these were triple-A rated, or when lending to Greece. 

In fact, when bank regulators imposed on the banks their capital requirements, they basically told the banks that analyzing the mortgage market was none of their business, because for that purpose, they had appointed their official risk managers, namely the credit rating agencies. 

Does FT really think that European banks should have sent expensive and qualified analysts to the US to check up on the mortgage market, when even most US banks were not doing that? I really wonder when is FT going to behave “without fear and without favor” when it comes to sharing out the blame for this crisis among banks and regulators? 

As I see it, someone who has not yet understood the distortive implications of current capital requirements for banks and which caused “L’economia castrata”, does not have the qualifications to run an ECB in these very critical days.