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 and Bank of England have become so desperate at the waywardness of their flock as to be preaching so defiantly the message of the Left, it might seem that real reform is finally in the air. Especially when regulators internationally (mainly in the US, not much in the UK) have already imposed penalties of $5.8bn for attempts to manipulate market benchmark rates. Continue reading
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 scrapped the US dollar’s link to gold, deregulation rapidly gathered pace with the removal of currency and interest rate controls.
