The world of banking has won two more victories over the rest of society.<\/p>\n
The challenge to its right to charge excessive fees to people who make the smallest error in running their bank accounts has been overthrown<\/a> by the new supreme court. This is regressive tax in all but name: it is now the poorest in our society who will continue to be charged excessive fees to bail out our banks.<\/p>\n And the Walker report on banking reform in the light of the banking crisis has proven to be even weaker than anyone feared. Julia Finch<\/a> has put it well in the Guardian:<\/p>\n Nine months' work. One hundred and eighty submissions of information and opinion. A weighty interim report, and 167 pages of final recommendations: so much work for so little. Sir David Walker<\/a>'s review of the corporate governance of banks, ordered back in February, is a crashing disappointment \u2014 an anti-climax of even greater proportions than the anodyne code of practice he drew up for the private equity business in 2007. Here was a chance to rewrite the rulebook in a bid to ensure that there would be no re-run of last year's crisis when two of Britain's biggest banks, it has now emerged, needed \u00a362bn of secret Bank of England support to keep their doors open. Instead we have some relatively minor tweaking.<\/p>\n Walker says he is "sympathetic with Guardian types ... it is outrageous that we have been left all this debt". But he is an investment banker and an old-school City man. He was never the man for this job.<\/p>\n The question is: why was he ever given it?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Given that for all practical purposes his report changes nothing at all \u2014 except disclose the number of employees earning more than \u00a31 million a year \u2014 for fear \u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201e\u00c3\u00b2talent might go abroad’ \u2014 this is the only relevant question. <\/p>\n\n