Could we please have our active commercial bankers back?

Sir Evan Salway is right when he urges to "Rethink the 'active versus passive' investment debate" May 15, but much more important is the issue of whether we want active versus passive bankers. I sure do!

Since it is the commercial banker's true societal role to be actively out there in the real world developing his skills in listening and analyzing the many different lending opportunities I feel saddened by seeing the bankers turning into passive credit-rating-agency-criteria followers and automated executioners of trading opportunities identified by computers running models that none of them fully understand.

Banking regulator in Basle...could we please have our active commercial bankers back?