January 24, 2017

Martin Wolf, I totally agree it is not nice where we find ourselves, but you’re part of how we got here… I am not!

Sir, Martin Wolf writes: “Who would have imagined that primitive mercantilism would seize the policymaking machinery of the world’s most powerful market economy and issuer of the world’s principal reserve currency? The frightening fact is that the people who seem closest to Mr Trump believe things that are almost entirely false… Protection just helps some businesses at the expense of others… The rhetoric of “America First” reads like a declaration of economic warfare.”"Trump and Xi battle over globalization" January 25.

Indeed but then again: “Who would have imagined that primitive statist technocrats would seize the regulatory machinery of banks of the world? And the frightening fact is that the people who seem close to the Basel Committee, like Martin Wolf, also believe things that are entirely false, like that what is perceived as very risky is very risky to our banking system… which only helps to protect the access to bank credit of “the safe”, at the expense of “the risky”…The rhetoric of “We Regulators must make our banks safe” reads like a declaration of economic warfare.”

Sir, I am sure that had the world not silently accepted the risk weighted capital requirements for banks in 1988, which introduced such obnoxious statist concepts of assigning a risk weight of 0% to the Sovereign and 100% to We the People; and then in 2004 going on to assign a such a meager risk weight of 20% to what was AAA rated… the subprime crisis would not have happened… Greece would not have received so much in loans, and Trump would still busy himself with hotels and casinos.

Martin Wolf, I understand you are also a victim of that confirmation bias that have swept the regulatory circle, but your silence on the distortion in the allocation of bank credit to the real economy, makes you, ever so little, an accomplice of Trump’s rise to the presidency of America… so don’t just wash your hands like any Pilate.

PS. “rules-based trade” is not really “open markets”


@PerKurowski