President Obama’s call to make banks shed risky trading – effectively a new Glass-Steagall Act – is not off the UK agenda, despite being dismissed by government ministers. The architect of the plan, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, is coming to the House of Commons to outline his plan.
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It’s a funny old world where Tesco (LON:TSCO) is the answer to a monopolies problem.
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The government’s promise of three new banks looks attractive for an industry that has retreated to a Big Four offering little competition. But one of the three newcomers isn’t new and the other two are tiddlers.
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It’s taken a long time to get a policy statement from shadow chancellor George Osborne, but now it has come, his call for curbs on bankers’ bonuses risks generating sympathy for the villains.
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If banks shouldn’t be “too big to fail” how small must they be before we allow them to collapse? It’s the question the Bank of England’s governor must answer.
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The UK government has spent a fortune of our money rescuing the banking sector. Doesn’t it seem reasonable to recover the money from the sector itself. Is it time for a new windfall tax on banks?
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There is something perverse about a recession-hit company being bullied by a bank whose own finances are in a far worse state. When it comes to renegotiating loans, borrowers should exploit the banks’ weaknesses.
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Britain’s banks have raised more than £100bn of new equity in the past year – yet their combined stockmarket worth is less than £100bn. They’ve destroyed all the value they had, plus much of the money meant to save them.

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