Yesterday’s OECD report which finds that income inequality has risen faster in Britain than in any other wealthy country since the mid-1970s is a wake-up call. The share of total national income held by the top 1% reached 14.3% in 2005, having doubled since 1970, and is almost certainly higher now, perhaps 16-17%. The position […]
Posts Tagged ‘Banking’
Are banks the untouchables?
Nov 15th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Latest figures show Big 5 banks are now lending only half to SMEs that they pledged under Operation Merlin to an enormous fanfare of self-congratulation a year ago. There have been no checks imposed on proprietary trading or on transactions in financial derivatives, both of which were main contributors to the financial crash of 2008-9. […]
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£2bn in profit but RBS keeps on sacking
Nov 10th, 2011 by Newsdesk.Bailed-out bank Royal Bank of Scotland is back in the black and lending again – but still continues to sack their own workers. The 83 per cent state-owned bank posted third-quarter pre-tax profits of £2 billion last week, following a £678 million loss earlier this year and a £1.6bn loss in 2010.
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The second global banking crash
Nov 7th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The EU sovereign debt crisis is not primarily about the 17 countries that constitute the Eurozone, it’s about the intertwined European banks’ exposure to a mountain of speculative lending in high-risk countries that could never have survived German competitiveness within a single currency. The UK is equally at fault here even though not itself a […]
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How the super-rich rationalise their greed
Sep 13th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The super-rich may not be much good at running the country, having engineered the worst financial crash for nearly a century, but they are certainly assiduous at justifying their own greed. Yesterday the Vickers Commission on Banking proposed a firewall between retail and casino investment banking designed to check profiteering from reckless speculation which is […]
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Vickers is a cop-out – banking to stay dangerous
Apr 12th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The Vickers report is a cop-out. Perhaps we should never have expected anything else, for two reasons. When bankers, as research has shown, now provide half of Tory party funding, it is highly unlikely that a Tory Government will set up a Commission on Banking that significantly penalises banking interests when that might seriously jeopardise […]
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When are the banks going to be reformed?
Mar 28th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.It is astonishing that the banks, having cost the country £68bn in bailouts plus an additional £850bn in loan guarantees, asset protection schemes and enhanced liquidity, have not been reformed in any way in structure, pay, bonuses or lending. True, the Vickers Commission is due to report later this year and may some division between the […]
