Osborne and Tucker have both been damaged by Libor row July 9, 2012 THERE will be two immediate consequences from Paul Tucker’s grilling by MPs yesterday. The first is that George Osborne has just been plunged into a political crisis of his own making; his strategy to implicate senior Labour party figures such as Ed Balls and Shriti Vadera has backfired spectacularly. Tucker, the Bank of England’s deputy [...]
Why it must be made much easier to switch bank accounts July 8, 2012 FOR once, Labour has got it half right. It will confirm today that it wants to make it much easier for current account holders to change bank, in a bid to empower consumers and to drastically improve competition in retail banking. The idea is to make switching bank as easy as it is changing mobile [...]
Why QE is not the answer to Britain’s economic problems July 5, 2012 IVAN PAVLOV, the psychologist who famously trained his dogs to respond to stimuli, would have been proud. Whenever the economy grinds to a halt, regardless of reason, well-conditioned policymakers from Beijing to Frankfurt always respond in the same way: they cut interest rates and wheel out the printing presses. It is the new orthodoxy: ever [...]
Pity Osborne isn’t this passionate when talking about growth July 4, 2012 WHAT a shame. Yesterday’s grilling of Bob Diamond, Barclays’ swashbuckling former boss, while not quite a damp squib, did not really clarify a great deal. There were some intriguing revelations – including that the relationship between the FSA and Barclays had been bad for months and that Diamond was worried that the government would nationalise [...]
Crisis threatens UK’s entire politico-financial establishment July 3, 2012 THIS is no longer just a crisis for Barclays, even though that particular bank has just suffered a devastating blow. This is now a crisis that could engulf the entire British establishment in a much broader way than anything we saw in 2008-09. The questions are piling up at an astonishing rate. Remember that there [...]
We should prosecute criminals, not set up endless inquiries July 2, 2012 WE should be grateful for small mercies: yesterday’s announcements from the government concerning the banking crisis were half good. It is excellent news that the authorities have become more serious in their determination to prosecute wrong-doing criminally. Fines are not enough; we need to see tough jail sentences for those who break the rules and [...]
Barclays chair was right to resign over scandal July 1, 2012 IT took a few days too long but the Libor scandal has finally claimed its first senior scalp. Marcus Agius, Barclays’ chairman since January 2007, has quit, in a bid by the firm to show senior staff are taking responsibility for the rate-rigging scandal. That was the right thing for Agius to do: the Libor [...]
From boom to bezzle: this banking scandal will run and run June 28, 2012 CAN it get any worse for Britain’s banks? Well, yes. Much, much worse. Not only is Barclays merely the first firm to settle when it comes to the despicable Libor scandal – others are also being investigated – but the FSA is about to announce that it will penalise a number of banks for a [...]
Libor manipulation scandal is a disastrous own goal for City June 27, 2012 WHAT preposterous emails. What were these traders thinking? That they would get away with it? Barclays and the entire banking industry have been badly damaged by the Libor manipulation scandal – and this time it is entirely a crisis of their own making. This is not like some previous rounds of banker-bashing, where lenders were [...]
Falling tax receipts show that we’ve forgotten Laffer’s lesson June 26, 2012 SOMETHING very worrying is happening to the UK’s public finances. Income tax and capital gains tax receipts fell by 7.3 per cent in May compared with a year ago, according to official figures. Over the first two months of the fiscal year, they are down by 0.5 per cent. This is merely the confirmation of [...]