SIR – Mr Bird (T&A, January 2) remains in complete denial of the financial and economic damage inflicted on the world by his role models, Thatcher and Reagan. It was ultimately their ill-informed obsession with the unregulated economic theories of Friedrich Hyack and Milton Friedman that has led the world economies to the cliff.

Dewy-eyed, he recalls the heady days (pre-1980s) when bankers were benevolent souls dressed in pinstripe suits and bowler hats. They would carefully harvest savers’ deposits and lend only that amount to well-vetted, upstanding, fresh-faced, mortgage applicants. Those were the days, eh?

Of course, those were the days before the brakes came off the financial services sector, the days before banks began to use high-pressure sales tactics to lend money and began lending to anyone – the inevitable outcome occurred in 2008.

Banks these days produce 97 per cent of the UK money supply. Nobody, not the Chancellor nor the Bank of England, has any control over them or their actions whatsoever.

I studied economics at masters degree level. Perhaps Mr Bird can imagine how thunderstruck I was to discover how banks have taken advantage of the evolution to digital money?

Christopher Hindle, Osterley Grove, Bradford