Beware bankers opening banks

Let's keep this in the right perspective. We have a crisis in the construction sector, which affected the banking system, which in turn affects everything else.

And we know bankers. They spread their problems over the whole economy so that governments come to their rescue. That's akin to holding a country to a ransom.

It's been always the same old story. They didn't count the number of cranes at the construction sites in Dallas, Texas back in the eighties. During the 1980's property loans have formed an ever bigger part of commercial banks' loans. Banks had a total exposure of US$210 billion with $350 billion out in commercial property loans -- equivalent to 370 percent of American banks' total equity (The Economist, Dec. 9, 1989).

Don't those guys ever learn, or do they earn their money because of the short memory of the markets? When a bank is robbed they call the police. I think we should do the same when they open a bank.

OSVALDO COELHO

Jakarta