The public’s demand for re-nationalisation is steadily growing, partly because the record of privatised companies has been so poor, partly because the excuse of globalisation is now seen not to betoken greater efficiency but rather funnelling increasing assets to the very rich and undermining job security for workers, and partly the big new outsourcing companies […]
Posts Tagged ‘Banking’
When will Labour tackle market failure and revive the role of the State?
Dec 3rd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The roll call of shame and disgrace about the record of the private banks, privatised utilities and outsourcing companies has now reached such a pitch that surely Labour must now challenge the whole culture of ‘the market knows best’ and in the extreme form of the neoliberal ideology that ‘government should get out of the […]
Hedge funds capture Labour’s bankers – no longer Coop owned
Oct 21st, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Hedge funds and other major investors have forced the Cooperative Group to cede majority control of the Cooperative Bank, Labour’s bankers, with the Group’s stake in the bank dropping from 70% to 30%. The US-based hedge funds Aurelius Capital (a ‘vulture’ fund which bought the debt of bankrupt Argentina and forced them to pay out) and Silver […]
Bail-out banks need a strong-arm, not a sell-off
Aug 4th, 2013 by Ben Folley.The announcement that Lloyds TSB are back in profit has automatically triggered discussion of the government selling off its 39% share in the bank, back to the private sector. For Labour, it should trigger a discussion on an increasingly interventionist approach to the economy. Britain’s privately-owned banks were bailed out with billions from the taxpayer […]
Why the US-UK economic model fails the test on almost all counts
May 29th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Whilst the City of London, the Stock Exchange and super-rich investors strive continually to assure us that growth is returning and that we can all soon return to business-as-usual as though the biggest financial crash for a century was just an unfortuante blip rather than integral to the core system, they never ask the really […]
The biggest banks are still not curbed
May 23rd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.In the 1960s banking assets accounted for some 50% of GDP. By the late 2000s they had risen to about 200% of GDP. In the case of Britain with its grossly over-extended international banking sector, they had risen to 500% of GDP. The reasons for this were partly to enable large companies to start doing […]
Why are the banks that failed us so catastrophically still coddled?
Apr 3rd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.It is almost unbelievable that the banks which (i) cost the taxpayer £68bn in immediate bailout costs, (ii) have pushed up Britain’s national debt to its current level of £1.16 trillion, (iii) have inflated the budget deficit to service this debt to its current £120bn, and (iv) have thus given Osborne the excuse to launch […]
Ed Miliband is right, Britain lacks local banks – RBS could fill that void
Mar 26th, 2013 by Tony Greenham.Why not convert a large, publicly owned bank into a network of local banks like those that operate successfully in Germany? Ed Miliband’s speech to the British Chambers of Commerce marked an important step towards filling a vital gap in our banking system – the place where you live. The UK banking system, dominated by […]
The banks are laughing all the way to the……bank
Mar 10th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Six years after the baking crisis broke the House of Commons is finally legislating to ensure it doesn’t happen again. It’s a joke if it wasn’t so desperately serious. The Financial Services (Banking Reform) bill, which gets its second reading on Monday (11th), is implementing the Vickers proposals to ring-fence the retail segment of the […]
Bank regulation to prevent another crash recedes into the distance
Feb 1st, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Quietly, with no fanfare and no headlines, the banks are steadily chipping away at the measures, meagre and delayed as they already are, designed to prevent another global financial crash. First, the capital adequacy ratios – the financial reserves that have be held to prevent or absorb any run on the bank that might develop […]