February 19, 2011

Martin Wolf and the rest of us baby-boomers might soon be invited to visit an “ättestupa”

Sir, Martin Wolf looks to explain “Why the world´s youth is in a revolting state of mind” February 19. He fails to sufficiently transmit the seriousness of the issue something that you might understand better when reading reports about the millions after millions of young men in the Middle East who because of a lack of job opportunities will not ever have the means required to start a family.

Wolf would do well placing all the demographic challenges the world faces in the perspective of the fact that the only objective for our banks their regulators have set, is for the banks not to fail. Perhaps the regulators have been appointed by the baby-boomers with the instructions of making sure their assets are safe while they are still around, in the best “après nous le deluge” style.

No! Our youth deserves our banks perform their capital allocation function freely and without regulatory interference. Otherwise we older, Martin Wolf included, might with reason be invited by the youth to take a walk to the nearest “ättestupa”… meaning those cliffs from which according to a Scandinavian myth the elders threw themselves down when they no longer were useful. But perhaps it is that Mr. Wolf is counting on himself being lucky enough to find himself among those with “resource wealth to buy off their young”