Six global banks, two them British, have just been fined £5.6bn in what the FBI has called ‘massive scale’ criminality, yet no individual executive has been prosecuted and no bank has been deprived of its licence to practise which would have happened in any other sector given such monumental wrongdoing. Indeed State regulators have gone […]
Posts Tagged ‘Regulation’
Hound of Hounslow shows non-regulation of banks remains extremely dangerous
Apr 29th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.No-one had heard of Navinder Singh Sarao until on 6 May 2010 he ‘spoofed’ the international stock markets while sitting in his room in his parents’ semi in Hounslow and made $879,000 on that day alone and, it is alleged, $40 millions fraudulently over 5 years. He is now awaiting extradition to the US to […]
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Why isn’t HSBC being prosecuted?
Feb 16th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The differential treatment between those low-paid workers who fraudulently claim benefits and those top bank executives who launder hundreds of millions of pounds for drug cartels or pariah states tells you all you need to know about the class basis of justice in the UK. A person claiming benefits while working can get up to […]
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Why media conglomerates should be broken up
Jul 8th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The hacking trials aren’t even half the issue. The hard, unavoidable fact remains that the power of the Murdoch press – the real unspoken stain behind the Brooks-Coulson trials – is undiminished and has still not been broken. It is best illustrated by the run-up of events to the long-planned Murdoch campaign to take over […]
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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 are UK regulators so soft on British banks?
May 23rd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.This week the Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, was forced by the US Department of Justice to pay a fine of $2.6bn for its secret activities in enabling its US clients to evade US taxes. Ever since 2009 when UBS buckled under pressure from US prosecutors and agreed to pay $0.78bn in fines and to pass […]
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Bankers back to business as usual
May 12th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Two articles of faith in the banking class is that regulation always undermines growth and that financial crises are inevitable. Both these claims are wrong and cannot be supported by the evidence of the last 70 years. On the first, it was the absence of regulation which precipitated the epic 2008-9 breakdown. Starting from 1971 when Nixon […]
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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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Watchdogs? More like dormice! Time to make them sackable
Jan 9th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Two contemporary cases highlight perfectly how accountability has become a byword for impunity. It is almost incredible that Paul Flowers, the disgraced former chairman of the Co-op Bank, was appointed after one 90-minute interview, even though he was a financial illiterate (he estimated the bank’s asset base at £3bn when actually it is £47bn) and […]
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The Coop group is in a mess: deal with it
Nov 21st, 2013 by Richard Murphy.I’m angry that the Co-op group is in a mess. As a member I have been let down. As a customer of the bank they’ve failed me. As a believer in the co-op approach to business I am disappointed that flagship co-op has failed so many other successful co-ops by its actions. I am annoyed […]
