March 10, 2016

Central banks, when are you going to lift that dangerous capital control the Basel Commitee concocted? Its urgent!

Sir, Donal O’Mahony speaks out loud and clear. We do have many reasons to question whether central bankers have a good idea about what they are doing, or only making it worse with their "we invent as we go along" creativity. “Experimental policies of central banks pose threat to confidence” March 10.

O’Mahony refers primarily to QEs and zero or even negative interest measures. I personally concern myself much more with their much more insidous and so very dangerous distortion of bank credit allocation to the real economy.

Their credit risk weighted capital requirements for banks, are in all essence a strict capital control. It tells banks “Lend to ‘the safe’, the sovereigns and members of the AAArisktocracy, and stay away from ‘the risky’, the SMEs and entrepreneurs”

That capital control must be lifted, urgently, if we are ever going to have a chance of a sturdy economy able to generate those jobs our kids need.

Sir, you know I have mentioned it before but again, between you and me, perhaps we should seriously consider firing all central bankers. They are just too dangerous for our health.

Already in 1995, in “The Confidence Game” Steven Solomon wrote of “how central bankers have shaped the course of economic and political events in the past fifteen years, why their influence relative to elected political leaders has reached a historical zenith, and how it reveals one of the greatest pressing dangers facing free democracy.”

@PerKurowski ©