January 08, 2016

Out with Stefan Ingves, Mario Draghi, Mark Carney and other, and in with Daniel Kish, Conrad Allen and Lenore Skenazy

Sir, Emma Jacobs has penned one of the most important articles I have read over the last decades. I refer to “Teachers who make risk child’s play: Three people who coach children in how they can anticipate and manage hazards offer their insights on how to be bold” January 8.

In it she describes how Daniel Kish, president and founder of World Access for the Blind and chief perceptual-navigation instructor, he himself blind, teaches blind children how to manage risks they cannot see.

Compare that to silly bank regulators who, by means of their credit risk weighted capital requirement for banks, want to help bankers to manage the risks they already see.

And she refers to Conrad Allen, chief instructor of True-ways Survival, who objects to that kids “don’t go into the woods to play any more… largely because their parents are risk avoiders rather than risk mitigators”

And compare that to silly bank regulators who, by means of their credit risk weighted capital requirement for banks, give banks ice cream and chocolate cake, larger risk adjusted returns on equity, as long as they stay away from those dangerous forests where spinach an broccoli, SMEs and entrepreneurs, grow.

And she refers to Lenore Skenazy, a free-range parenting advocate who “has spoken at schools to encourage children to push back against their parents’ well-meaning coddling and take risks”

And compare that to the silly bank regulators who, by means of their credit risk weighted capital requirement for banks, insist with Basel III in that bankers should stick to refinancing the safer past and stay away from financing the riskier future.

As for me, I would, without a doubt, immediately throw out the current regulators in the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, and gladly hand it over to Daniel Kish, Conrad Allen and Lenore Skenazy, so as to save the Western Civilization, that which became what it is thanks to risk-taking and not to risk aversion.


@PerKurowski ©