These are my links for August 17th:

• FT.com / Comment & analysis / Editorial comment - Investment banks are bad taxpayers - The FT said "Investment banking is not dead but it is in a cyclical downturn. It has occupied an outsized role in western economies in the past decade and is now shrinking. This cyclicality, and its tendency to make losses every few years, make it an unreliable financial partner. Let the taxman beware."

  Actually, let's all beware. 1) It's not about investment, it's about gambling. 2) Gamblers are never reliable. 3) Should they be part of any economy?

• Ruth Sunderland: Why subsidise our shameless City when the north deserves a break? | Business | The Observer - A right-wing think-tank condemns some northern towns as beyond help. Merrill Lynch, a Wall Street investment bank, channels billions of dollars worth of credit-crunch losses through London and, as a consequence, may be able to operate in the UK perfectly legally for several decades without having to pay corporation tax. They seem like disparate pieces of information, but they are intimately linked.