"I believe that in the long run, markets are better than regulators at allocating credit," he said.

When an orchestra performs, listeners reflexively allocate credit and blame to the conductor and the players.

In the late 1980s, the power to allocate resources and credit was restored to the functional ministries.

Beijing also plans to accelerate efforts to have China's banks make decisions on allocating credit for commercial, rather than political, reasons.

If, however, minorities are less likely to obtain mortgages mostly because they are more likely to suffer from poverty, the cure - allocating credit by skin color - is arguably worse than the disease.

The government, in effect, would be allocating credit, a role shunned in Washington today.

Most private savings are funneled through the Government, which allocates credit and authorizes subsidies, project by project.

There is also evidence to show that by keeping interest rates artificially low in boom years, the state forced banks to allocate credit by rationing quantities and this favoured large borrowers.

In those precomputer days, it was quite a feat to imagine a gigantic clearinghouse allocating credit to each citizen and balancing the resulting supply and demand.

They also worry about setting a precedent for using the capital adequacy rules as a tool for allocating credit to different areas of the economy.