Nick Dearden of the Jubilee Debt Campaign has a good article in the New Statesman. It starts:
Bailing out the banks without progress on the world’s problems such as poverty and climate change is like socialism for the rich. It’s time for proper regulation…
I agree.
Especially as he focuses on tax havens / secrecy jurisdictions.
There’s a massive crisis in the pensions industry. It’s simply described. We’re living longer so pensions cost more.
In February the Pension Regulator proposed changes in rules to make sure this fact is recognised. But now the FT reports that:
The Pensions Regulator [has] rowed back on its proposals to require schemes to use assumptions about life [...]
The FT has reported:
Banks have failed to live up to the spirit of new accounting rules designed to make them disclose more about risk management practices.
In spite of the extra reporting demands placed on financial institutions as a result of the credit crunch, the biggest have largely stuck to the minimum requirements of the rules, [...]
The Jersey Evening Post has published an article saying:
AN Island firm with special expertise in regulatory law is deeply critical of the omission of Jersey from the European Union’s ‘white list’ of jurisdictions considered to have money-laundering controls equivalent to those in force in EU member states.BakerPlatt have produced a white paper on the issue, [...]
The FT has reported:
Institutional investors expect another big financial firm will collapse within the next six months in the continued fallout from the credit crunch, new research has shown.
Nearly 60 per cent of US and European institutional investors surveyed by Greenwich Associates believe there will be such a failure within the next six months. Another [...]
The Guardian has run a spoof article entitled “How to set up a hedge fund”. Well it would be a joke, except there second point is “Get a brass plaque in the Cayman Islands “, under which they say:
Nearly all hedge funds are legally registered in tax havens to avoid both the taxman and to [...]
The FT has reported that:
Banks have been given a one-year reprieve by US accounting standard-setters from having to take up to $5,000bn (£2,520bn) of debt assets on to their balance sheets, easing fears that they would be forced to raise large amounts of new capital quickly.
Robert Herz, FASB chairman, said that the move was made [...]
The Jersey Evening Post has reported that:
A LEADING Jersey finance company has been closed down by the Jersey Financial Services Commission following a police investigation into investment schemes which allegedly led to Islanders losing hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Serious no doubt, and appropriate, I am sure. But let’s be clear: Jersey’s tax corruption industry could [...]
The Parliamentary Ombudsman (Ann Abraham) has found that:
The U.K. should compensate Equitable Life Assurance Society policyholders who lost out when the insurer almost collapsed in 2000 because the government and regulators failed to properly supervise it for a decade.
It’s odd to note that in 2003 she found when reviewing exactly the same issue:
no evidence to [...]
The FT has reported that:
Ben Bernanke on Thursday called on Congress to consider sweeping changes to financial regulation, including much tighter supervision of investment banks.
The Federal Reserve chairman, who was testifying before the House financial services committee alongside Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, said legislators should look at “consolidated supervision” for investment banks, allowing regulators to [...]
