The Independent Commission on Banking asked the wrong question. It’s not whether Lloyds Banking Group plc (LON:LLOY) is too big to fail. It’s not whether it is has too big a market share. The question should have been whether it’s too big for one man to run.
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No-one expects to buy a tin of Tesco beans in a Sainsbury store, so why do MPs think a bank should pay out money to customers whose accounts are with rivals?
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Lloyds Bank Group (LON:LLOY) risks being doubly punished for its rescue of HBoS if it is forced by to sell a third of its branches. It bought more bad assets than it expected in the takeover but it now being made to sell the good ones.
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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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There is not only a dearth of takeovers at present, there is a trend to abandon bids that have already been announced. Are bidders’ eyes proving bigger than their stomachs or have predators lost their nerve?
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Borrowing is finally getting easier, according to a CBI survey, but don’t bank on it. To shore up their own balance sheets the big banks are planning to severely reduce their lending.
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Capitalists might not like to hear this. But it looks like the biggest ever experiment in Keynesian economics might just have worked.
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Every UK household has more than £3,000 invested in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds (LON:LLOY) shares, admitted UKFI, the government agency looking them for us, as it spelt out ways of selling them and the problems involved. So why not just give each household its shares?

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