Thursday 22 October 2009

Break up the banks

In calling for the break-up of some of the banks, the Governor of the Bank of England is talking a great deal of sense. It seems unlikely, however, that either a Labour or a Tory Government will take much notice of his call.

Following the Tory 'Big Bang' of deregulation, the distinction between the risky segment of merchant banking and the less risky section of high street banking became blurred. The two were allowed to merge - something which had previously been banned - and the result was that the risky element succeeded in gambling away the stability of the high street element.

We as taxpayers have had to bail them out. But it was mostly the collapse of the high street banks that we really had to avert; if the two hadn't been allowed to merge, the government would have found it a great deal easier to stand back and watch the gamblers take their richly deserved hit. And if they hadn't had the resources of our day to day banks to play with, perhaps the level of the damage they did would have been lower anyway.

Splitting the two segments back out makes eminent sense – and is by far the best way to ensure that the speculators do not destroy the financial services sector again, as they seem not only likely to do, but positively keen to do, if left to their own devices.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

good. Can we have a proper Banc Cymru now!?

Bloke

Anonymous said...

it is not a good news for the banks

John Dixon said...

Anon II,

Your point is? I don't worry overly whether it's good or bad news for the banks; I'm more concerned about whether it's good or bad news for the rest of us. And preventing them gambling our money away sounds like good news to me.

Spirit of BME said...

Mr Dixon, You and Little Merv King are again right on this one.
I doubt if will find out in the next 30 years why HMG did not let them go bust .I suspect two considferations came to be pointed out to them
1. You owe us as the Blair years tax take from the financial services sector funded the extra cash for Education and NHS.
2.If the banks did go under, London(England) will never again be a player in the global financial market and a dash into the Euro would be a certainty.(like Iceland is now doing)
2big2go bust, as the boys in red braces say is a very dangerous place to be and again Little Merv said this,with a preditction that unless there is break up a bigger bust could be on the cards.
I hope and trust when Liberation does come ,Wales will have a Federal Bank but but the States will make the rules within their boarders as different sets of rules is a safety factor in it self.