Forgetting the lesson of Nick Leeson

Barings collapsed and Leeson eventually ended up doing a spell in jail. There is almost an identical parallel with today's world financial crisis.

Over the past decade big banks and financial institutions, particularly in the US and UK, were allowed unrestrained freedom in their ravenous pursuit of profit. Warnings were given well in advance of the ensuing catastrophe but were ignored while fat cat financiers continued to feather their own nests.

In the Barings case, Leeson paid some form of penalty and Barings - not having any in situ protection - went under.

Today the situation differs considerably in that the crooked financiers - who have caused the downfall of markets through their reckless behaviour - have been quickly handed a safety net to jump into in the form of government bailouts from public funds and have been able to spend the last months before the impending disaster passing off bonuses and securities to themselves and their cronies.

Unlike Leeson, few of these "fat cats" have had to answer in court and many leave the devastated markets as multimillionaires - whilst the whole brunt of the meltdown has to be taken lower down the scale by small taxpayers/borrowers. Now the world economy is bankrupt and governments rush to introduce any kind of panacea in the hope that things will pass as quickly as they came. Unfortunately for us all, I don't think we have yet reached the bottom of the abyss and we have yet to observe the absolute extent of the damage wrought on the world economy through irrepressible, insatiable greed.

I predict that we may well be witnessing the beginning of the collapse of the capitalist business model, ironically in an even more embarrassing fashion than its communist counterpart.

JOE KELLY

BANGKOK

Compassion for the brutalised Rohingya

The vast majority of devoutly religious Rohingya Sunni-Islams, without legal status recourse while denied Myanmar [Burmese] citizenship, have been described by the in-denial, bully-ragging military junta as "less than human". Systematically suffering uncivil wronged rights, like other abused Burmese ethnic minorities, the estimated 3 million Rohingya people have been subjected to various forms of extortion, arbitrary taxation, land confiscation and eviction, forced labour, brutal rape and extrajudicial execution.

Without any viable options to eke out a living for their precious families, exiled boat people venture out into hostile seas with no secure safety, food/water provisions, nothing - save blind trust and enduring God-willing faith.

Fleeing intolerable hardship in search of better living conditions, menial jobs and more promising futures, too many persecuted escapees end up drowning, finding themselves at the mercy of corrupt traffickers or being confined in barbed-wire camps.

These stateless Muslim outcasts, not welcome anywhere, deserve to be treated with some semblance of compassionate respect. Our common-cause global family should champion their rights to be eventually resituated elsewhere, not repatriated, under the joint auspices of Asean and the UN High Commission.

Our caring and sharing so-called civilised world must join together to recognise, respond to and react vigorously to the too-long-ignored plight of these long-suffering, hapless victims.

CHANCHAI PRASERTSON

BANGKOK