UK economic recovery 'slow and protracted', Mervyn King warns | Business | guardian.co.uk .
Questioned about financial results from big banks last week suggesting there has already been some return to boom times in investment banking, [Mervyn] King said: "I sincerely hope they don't think it's business as usual."
He insisted that in the long run a structure needed to exist whereby banks could not make risky trades on the back of a "taxpayer guarantee".
Isn't that just about as close to saying "let's split up banking in the UK" as the Governor of the Bank of England can go without saying "For heaven's sake Alastair, just do it"?
Maybe he'll have to be as unsubtle as that.
Someone has to be. Because it has to happen.
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Alternatively, the Bank of England could say, quite clearly, that there will not ever be another bail out.
A lot of the people that you call “libertarian” blame the excesses of recent years directly on the flawed and unnecessary decision to bail out LTCM when it ran into trouble in 1997. Had it gone to the wall, it would have nearly – but not quite – ruined Bear Stearns and Lehmans, who would have limped on, weaker but chastised. Instead, they were left feeling emboldened and were the biggest culprits a decde later.
The bail out of banks in 2007/8 probably was necessary, and it will be a long time before banks over-leverage themselves in the way they did up to that point. But this intervention should – must – be characterised as a one-off, and not a standing guarantee.
Why must it be, mad foetus? When a budding criminal robs someone without getting caught, they are bound to do it again.
It’s taken gross negligence of the highest order for some people to start understanding how directly the public are exposed to the risk from these chancers. People are losing their jobs in great numbers. The productivity, the community, the hope dissolves shortly afterwards. Public services would be stretched in any time with this social pathogen, but faced with cuts you can imagine how overworked it will be. The toll on those in frontline out-reach will create further issues – how many years will those workers put up with worsening conditions and real term wage falls before action is taken?
It goes on and on.
There are entire communities in the UK that haven’t even begun to recover from the two recessions in the 80s and 90s. 1 in 5 18-24 year olds in the UK are unemployed. That’s now. There’s no manufacturing for them to go back into. There’s no real money for real things.
We’ve had a couple of years of self-centred, arrogant defences of their practices without a single recognition that their entirely unaccountable actions will ruin the lives of thousands of people, in many cases until their bloodline dies out. You’d expect that in some documentary on some other country – callous rule by the overlords resulting in life debts etc.
Colourful, maybe, but to ignore what has been dredged up from the rank underbelly is just perpetuating this intensifying psychosis.
Why should we trust the same people that seem quite happy to wreak havoc on people’s existences? Terrorists couldn’t do a better job.
ah mad foetus, I put my glasses on and read your post properly. So my response is random.
apologies.