A new official inquiry into the banks is announced just when Osborne announces that the banking crisis is finally over. In fact it’s still coming to the boil – how does he manage to keep on coming up with these gags? Just 6 years late, you might think. But that’s the least problem. The real issue is […]
Posts Tagged ‘Banking’
“A plan only banksters will love”: WikiLeaks reveals permanent global deregulation plan
Jun 24th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) a trade agreement covering 50 countries and more than 68 percent of world trade in services is being drawn up between the EU and the US. The draft agreement was supposed to remain secret and you weren’t going to be told why it was being agreed or what its effect would […]
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Official: the banks are the new enemy within
May 29th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.One couldn’t put it better: ‘Some prominent firms/banks have been mired in scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms’. ‘Unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the essential social capital’. ‘A fierce industry push-back by the banks’ is blocking much-needed reforms and risks destabilising the global economy. When the high priests of capitalism at the IMF […]
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Why banks power to create money should be regulated and directed (but not ended)
Apr 27th, 2014 by Ann Pettifor.Ann is author of “Just Money: how society can break the despotic power of finance”, published by Commonwealth, 2014. The Financial Times is hosting a major debate on whether the private banking system should be allowed to continue creating 97% of the credit or money circulating within the economy. Martin Wolf, its respected economics commentator, supports […]
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The Banking Reform Act is rearranging the deck chairs on the neoliberal Titanic
Mar 6th, 2014 by Prem Sikka.Some six years after the banking crash, the UK has wheeled out its answer – the Banking Reform Act. Some deckchairs have been rearranged, but little attention has been paid to the key drivers of the crisis. The biggest financial crisis has coincided with the rise of neoliberalism, which emphasised faith in free markets and light-touch […]
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We can end the despotism of finance, at a price
Feb 25th, 2014 by Ann Pettifor.After the 2008 global financial crisis and panic, the international banking system very nearly collapsed. In the days after Lehman Brothers failed, panic prevailed. ATMs were on the very brink of denying punters access to their own money. A prominent international banker advised his wife to withdraw all their funds from the banking system. To […]
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The next big crash is already in sight
Feb 7th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The 2008-9 crisis highlighted two fundamental flaws in the UK banks. The first was illiquidity when their creditors and depositors withdrew their money at the first sign of serious trouble, but the banks couldn’t call in their loans in order to pay them, and the Bank of England had to intervene to provide them with […]
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Our monetary system is a great, if wildly misunderstood, public good
Jan 14th, 2014 by Ann Pettifor.Britain and Europe’s economic discourse is embarrassingly er…vulgar. Treasury and Finance ministers’ determination to paper over the role of big banks in the 2007-9 crisis, and instead use the opportunity to re-structure Europe’s welfare states, is both crass in economic terms, but also crude politics. Politicians are influenced by what I call the kitchen table […]
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One law for the banks and another for everyone else
Jan 7th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The banks are getting away with it again, and this time with potentially very serious consequences for the world economy. The 2008/9 financial collapse occurred, as everyone knows, because all the world’s major banks had been peddling toxic mortgage-backed securities based on sub-prime properties and trading them very profitably on a colossal scale across the […]
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Ten banks fined £130bn: time to restructure a corrupt and rotten system
Dec 10th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The costs of gross misconduct by leading banks, including RBS and Lloyds, have been estimated by LSE research at £130bn in the 6 years to the end of 2013. That is significantly more than Britain’s total budget deficit (£111bn) and substantially more than the international aid budget supplied by the 24 richest countries (£80bn). More […]
