May 03, 2016

If Draghi were a nanny at a sandbox, he would tell the kids to beware of the ugly, and trust much the nice looking

Sir, I refer to Claire Jones’s “Draghi rejects criticism of ECB rate drop” May 3.

Mario Draghi is the former chair of the Financial Stability Board and the current chair of the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision of the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision.

As such, he has been and is a full supporter of the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, those supposed to make banks safer; those that for instance in Basel II assigned a risk weight of 20% to those rated AAA, and one of 150% to those rated below BB-.

I'm sorry, anyone who believes borrowers rated below BB- pose a greater risk for the banking system than those rated AAA, has never ever walked on Main Street and has no idea of life and risks.

Therefore Sir, I would never ever contract Mario Draghi to watch over my grandchildren at a sandbox, much less to be president of the ECB.

If Draghi now wants to convince us that negative interests are good, let him, I still don’t trust him.

Draghi puts, like so many others, like your Martin Wolf, a lot of the blame on a savings glut. That completely ignores the fact that so many SMEs and entrepreneurs are kept from using that saving glut to try to have a go at their dreams, only because of credit risk adverse bank regulators.

To even think you need negative interests to get an economy going is, how can I put it mildly, totally absurd.

By the way his squabbles with Germany are, in this context, completely irrelevant to me.

PS. Could Draghi by any chance just be another Chauncey Gardiner?


@PerKurowski ©