A Banking 'Leveson' ePetition

[Lateralthinking1]

We could always give Inquiry like powers to all of the Select Committees.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

excellent idea Lat

[Lateralthinking1]

excellent idea Lat

Thanks Calum. I'm not sure how it would work but it feels in principle like stronger democracy all round.

[ahinton]

I agree with scottycelt that there really is no need for a Leveson-style enquiry, since pretty well all the shortcomings of the financial institutions are well known. We know for instance that:

1) reckless bank investments, or gambling using complex derivatives, have created the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression
2) those investments were encouraged by short-term incentives and the knowledge that losses were effectively underwritten by the taxpayer
3) banks have been manipulating the inter-bank interest rate for their own advantage
4) banks have routinely been mis-selling financial products
5) banks have severely cut lending to small businesses, preferring to use the generous BoE quantitative easing to shore up their own precarious finances
6) that regulation of the banks has been (and still is) far too light
7) that the relationship between politicians and bankers has been, and is, far too cosy so that even after the crash of 2008 politicians are still reluctant to put in effective regulation
8) that top bankers' pay is excessive and not related to long-term achievement (or indeed any kind of achievement)

So what more could a year long Leveson-type enquiry reveal? Surely what is needed is an independent commission with cross-party membership, revisiting the Vickers conclusions, to come up with much tougher regulation - and probably the full separation of retail and investment operations, with bank executives to be made criminally accountable for corporate failures.

That's all very well - and it will be interesting to see what the various possible outcomes of this coming Wednesday's grilling of Diamond by TSC might turn out to be - but I don't see that this alone can hope to suffice. Whilst scapegoating for its own sake will have little effect in the long run beyond possibly offering some degree of temporary satisfaction to those of principally vengeful disposition baying for blood, I do not see that a thorough reform of the banking system (which will be the only viable solution if it can be made possible) can properly be effected until and unless not only all the culprits involved in the activities now under scrutiny have been identified and publicly censured but also every nook and cranny of those miscreants' activities have been identified, fully examined and thoroughly understood; attempts to rely on anything less than this will inevitably result in the replacement of one financial omni-shambles with yet another.

Furthermore, there's little point in calling for "tougher regulation" when the regulators charged with full responsibility for it do not carry it out as thoroughly as they could and should, as has self-evidently been the case in recent times when an FSA with its eyes off the ball (or perhaps being offered back-handers to keep them there) stands by and allows what's happened to happen and then, when the excrement collides with the air conditioning, seek to pretend - like BOE - that they knew nothing about it.

[amateur51]

At last someone speaking with some commonsense as opposed to the usual cant and drivel about 'posh boys'. This rot started back when Labour was in power and let us not forget that. The very same Labour Government that introduced the idea of 'something for nothing' into our national psyche with their liberalisation of the legal practice. Result? We are the 'whiplash' injury centre of the world.

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Have you ever met a merchant banker, RM?

As for the 'liberalisation of legal practice' I think you'll find that it originated in the jolly old US of A rather than Kirkcaldy

[Anna]

It's just been announced that Politicians are to investigate the Bankers. Is that not a bit like the blind leading the blind?

[subcontrabass]

It's just been announced that Politicians are to investigate the Bankers. Is that not a bit like the blind leading the blind?

More like the blind leading the deaf.

[Anna]

More like the blind leading the deaf.

More like the lunatics taking over the asylum?

[ahinton]

More like the lunatics taking over the asylum?

Nah - can't be that; this already happened ages ago, did it not?...

[Anna]

Nah - can't be that; this already happened ages ago, did it not?...

I once had an interview with a Barclays Banker. He was not so much a Posh Boy, more like an East End Barrow boy with a sharp suit, designer shoes, a conspicuous Rolex and a great salesman who, unfortunately, didn't understand decimal points. I later got (grudgingly) compensation from Barclays but only because I persued the matter.

[Serial_Apologist]

I once had an interview with a Barclays Banker. He was not so much a Posh Boy, more like an East End Barrow boy with a sharp suit, designer shoes, a conspicuous Rolex and a great salesman who, unfortunately, didn't understand decimal points. I later got (grudgingly) compensation from Barclays but only because I persued the matter.

Basildon Man has reached your neck of the woods then, Anna. My deepest commiserations to you.

[ahinton]

Basildon Man has reached your neck of the woods then, Anna. My deepest commiserations to you.

Commiserations or otherwise, do please bear in mind that if Basildon Man can infiltrate Powys he can get - and has almost certainly already gotten - pretty much everywhere, rather as I wrote recently that the silly old pop song about a diamond was the wrong choice and should have been Diamonds are Forever (not, of course, that I want them to be so in this context, you understand...)

[teamsaint]

It's just been announced that Politicians are to investigate the Bankers. Is that not a bit like the blind leading the blind?

a charade as well.
The politicians are already in the banks pockets.
Check out who is on the various front benches, and where they go after politics..........

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

“Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel.

Anthony Trollope

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the indie in form today

stiglitz profile in which he calls for bankers to be jailed and politically neutered