Will Hutton has an article in the Observer this morning in which he discusses the loss at RBS. The sub-heading is:
Our economy is at a watershed. We need a new capitalism that will stop firms thinking in the short-term
That is right, of course. But it made me wonder how often we need to say it though and I recalled two articles from October 2008. One was by me on a strategy for nationalised banks: if only we had done it. The other was by Polly Toynbee who said:
Brown himself can only regain lost trust if he realises quite what a monumental task that is, for him as well as for finance. That means far more than simply getting the City back on its feet, dusting down its worst excrescences and lopping off a few bank managers' heads (with their multimillion pensions intact). It will take more radical action and more resonant language. Alas, his committee of advisers consists of the City people who got us into this: the takers of the fattest pay, the sitters on each others' boards. Paul Myners, late of the Guardian, will be no radical steam cleaner as City minister, more of a feather duster. Brown needs a severe committee of those economists who were right when he was wrong - people to frighten the City, not to soothe its frightened feathers. Appoint the Richard Murphys, Will Huttons and Larry Elliotts not as City tsars but as City Savonarolas to flush out tax avoidance and evasion, to close down tax havens, to appoint honest non-executives to company boardrooms and institute a regime built on public trust.
It didn't happen, of course.
And I still doubt whether Labour would have the courage to do any such thing now. But I'd suggest that radicalism is still required, even if some of the details would change.
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This sort of thing needs to be in our newspapers and media.
We are all going to be much poorer for it not being so.
It won’t be!
RBS lost £7 billion last year, a cumulative loss of £58 billion since 2008.
Given such a staggering diminution in net worth how can this entity remain liquid,where is the additional capital coming from on a year by year basis that will allow it to pay it’s creditors?
Excellent question and I have not had time to look: sorry
What do you see as being the future of banking in the UK?
Grisly is we have another serious economic downturn
I am not convinced by robustness as yet
Keeping RBS going only means the taxpayer is on the hook for all the misconduct – that is why supposedly they are in fact profitable but have enormous provision for fines. This will effectively mean exporting money to the US. How clever these bankers are!
NatWest are closing down branches hand over fist, which does wonders for the local community and they only supply businesses with cash to order! You go in and want a float for three or four tills, tough, they’ve got no money!
RBS should be closed down as soon as possible and then the skeleton reformed as a basis for separate, local not for profit banks to look after local SMEs on the German model.
Totally agree Richard! We first had contact in the “Blair New Labour” days when we produced the film for Stamp Out Poverty campaigning for a commitment to the Currency Transaction Tax. We had Brown on film making a commitment to the CTT saying if he came into power he would get it enforced. Of course he never spoke if it when he finally took over from Blair. Then when the 2008 banking crisis hit us all, he was in a pivotal position to put the right measures in place to reform our banking system. I never blamed Labour for the actual crisis but I was furious with Brown for being so weak and not putting the right reforms in place. I keep asking myself why? In my view, what’s wrong with Labour even today should be laid at the feet of all those MP’s who supported the bad decisions of both Blair & Brown and until they change their attitude, working people will not vote for them as they a just a pale shade of Tories.Corbyn is trying to change all that but the PLP want to keep it the same. That is what is destroying the party.
There are clearly some real problem people in the PLP of the type you describe
But let’s not pretend that Corbyn is not a problem because he is: he is incompetent