If the Financial Services Authority is to disappear after the general election, then chairman Lord Turner seems determined to destroy the financial services industry first. Not only does he propose taxing it into oblivion, he thinks Britain would benefit from being less dependent on the sector.
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Is the Bank of England governor being run by a wily banker or a fanatical economist going for broke? Mervyn King’s attempt to increase the quantitative easing programme to £200bn looks like a losing gambler doubling his stakes.
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Banks should name their highest-paid non-directors, according to Treasury minister Lord Myners. Why? To better inform shareholders? So that customers can switch bank? Or merely to satisfy some prurient public interest?
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When the recession is over, the great debate will not be on what caused it – there is no great argument on that – but on whether quantitative easing helped end it.
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The Tories wanted the tripartite of financial regulators scrapped. Alistair Darling has done it. It will now be called the Council for Financial Stability. And given more powers.
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After bankers and MPs, FTSE directors are now the target of public humiliation. Boards that thought the City was their ally have discovered it is their assassin.
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After all those years fighting inflation the government finds itself criticised for abolishing price rises! True, the government is criticised for everything now, but this is a problem for later, not the present.
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Finally the chancellor is to admit what this blog has long been warning. Rather than result in a profit for taxpayers, the bank rescues will leave us with a large loss. The point now is who pays?
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Future years will be dictated by the cost of paying for rescuing the financial system. They will also be dominated by governments’ attempts to sell its stakes in two enormous banks. Perhaps the two are connected.
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When big banks run by non-bankers have collapsed you’d have thought a qualification for heading the Bank of England would be a bit of experience in finance. Why then has the government rejected a top banker and decided this is a job for someone in the voluntary sector?
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