{"id":19153,"date":"2013-02-06T08:26:09","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T08:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=19153"},"modified":"2013-02-06T08:26:09","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T08:26:09","slug":"royal-bank-of-scotland-is-not-a-way-to-distribute-helicopter-money-vince-cable-needs-to-think-again-and-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/02\/06\/royal-bank-of-scotland-is-not-a-way-to-distribute-helicopter-money-vince-cable-needs-to-think-again-and-fast\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Bank of Scotland is not a way to distribute helicopter money. Vince Cable needs to think again, and fast"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FT reports this morning<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Business secretary Vince Cable will on Wednesday revive a radical plan to return\u00a0Royal Bank of Scotland\u00a0to the private sector by distributing free shares to the public, as the majority state-owned bank announces a \u00a3390m Libor settlement with UK and US regulators.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I admit I find that profoundly disappointing. This is the way that the\u00a0Russian\u00a0state assets were privatised, and the oligarchs resulted. At all sorts of levels this is a bad idea.<\/p>\n

First, many\u00a0people\u00a0will sell their shares - some, almost certainly, at an undervalue as people seek to buy entitlements. Massive steps would have to be taken to prevent that.<\/p>\n

Second, who would get shares? Those on the\u00a0electoral\u00a0roll? We know that's\u00a0incomplete. The logistics would be a nightmare.<\/p>\n

Third, this fails the bank: it needs clear solid leadership and a massively diversified ownership will carry the risk that control will fall to quite small minority blocks of shares. That's very worrying.<\/p>\n

Fourth, this bank needs to deliver state policy on lending, not pander to lowest common denominator market demands. That's how it got in the mess it's in.<\/p>\n

Fifth, we need a green bank: I do not think mass ownership will help that objective at\u00a0present. Mass ownership leads to short term thinking and long term thinking is needed.<\/p>\n

Full nationalisation will deliver what is needed.<\/p>\n

As it is Cable's plan looks like an excuse for\u00a0delivering\u00a0helicopter money to boost the economy in the\u00a0worst\u00a0possible way, by abusing an asset still in need of serious protection.<\/p>\n

This plan deserves to fail, now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FT reports this morning: Business secretary Vince Cable will on Wednesday revive a radical plan to return\u00a0Royal Bank of Scotland\u00a0to the private sector by
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}