Do you finance and development ministers believe that it is the purpose of your commercial banks to help nurture those small businesses and entrepreneurs that create new jobs while they become large enough to have credit ratings and access to capital markets?
Do you finance and development ministers believe that bank regulations are not there in order to increase the returns of banks in areas that are perceived as having low credit default risks and therefore already much favored by the markets?
Do you finance and development ministers believe that the banks should work as bridges directing capitals to generate growth and jobs and not just serve as tolls to assure profits to the financial sector?
Do you finance and development ministers believe that a 450 pages long “Financial Sector Assessment handbook”, published in 2005 by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, should contain more than 10 pages and the suggestion of only “express a general view” on the issue whether the financial services are adequately serving the needs of the real economy?
Do you finance and development ministers believe that there are other risks in the world much more important for the future wellbeing of your country than the risks of banks defaulting?
Do you finance and development ministers believe that the debt-sustainability framework should be about more than just sending the message that debts are good as long as they are sustainable?
Do you finance and development ministers believe that after a crisis like the current one exploded, regulators would be busy revising their regulatory paradigm instead of digging us even deeper in the hole we’re in?
If you do believe so you would perhaps want to contact someone like me.
Otherwise keep on doing what the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board and the International Monetary Fund and the big global banks want you to do.
Of course, much better than just contacting someone like me would be if you could contact the World Bank directly on the issue of banking and development. Unfortunately, ever since the Bank-Fund Financial Sector Liaison Committee was set up in 1998, the experts in the World Bank, in the name of harmonization, have been very much silenced by those in the Fund who, come what may, can only dream about of financial stability.
Best regards
Per Kurowski
A former Executive Director of the World Bank (2002-2004)
