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Why are the Tories so coy about a judge-led inquiry?
Parliament was at its worst yesterday. The mud wrestlers Osborne and Balls were so dementedly determined to lay toxic blame on each other for the shocking LIBOR scandal that the City escaped with...
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From BCCI to Standard Chartered: a brief alternative history of investment...
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which collapsed in 1991, was not widely known as the Bank of Crooks and Cocaine International for nothing. True, the Bank of England was a bit sniffy...
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There’s nothing to stop another financial crash
One of the great unspoken scandals of the post-2007 financial crash era is that no reform of the banking system has been put in place, though domestically the bank bail-out will cost UK taxpayers some...
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When are banksters going to be punished?
Peter Cummings (you won’t have heard of him – that’s the point) is, singled out alone, taking the rap for the misdeeds of the whole banking class and their behaviour, arrogant and reckless at worst and...
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Investment banking award: for illegal interest rate manipulation
It was the Investment Banking Awards last night, but the organisers had somehow neglected to include a prize for illegal interest rate manipulation. Fortunately help was at hand. (Hat-tip: New Left...
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When are we going to get serious with the bankers?
Andrea Orcel, the new head of investment banking at UBS and formerly at Merrill Lynch the adviser to RBS on the takeover of ABN Amro in 2007 (for which he got a fee of £7.5m, but cost taxpayers £45bn...
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They Owe Us! 14 June, 12.30pm, Canary Wharf, London
We are not all in this together. Look at Canary Wharf, home of some of the world’s biggest banks, located on a private estate in east London. Its shining glass towers are entirely within the borough of...
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What should bankers be paid?
As bankers’ pay + bonuses + long-term incentive schemes + share options + pension largesse begins to head north again as though the biggest financial/economic crash caused by them hadn’t happened and...
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The real enemy within
Bold and radical, Ed Miliband announced his plan to tackle vested interests within the energy market, a promise to fight for ordinary people who for years have complained about the rising cost of gas...
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Who can you trust in Britain today?
The latest evidence that GCHQ in their systematic electronic harvesting of information went far beyond what the law allowed, and were acutely well aware of this, is certainly troubling, but perhaps not...
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Animal spirits in the stockmarkets don’t add up to economic recovery in the...
There is an extraordinary combination at the start of 2014 of souped-up credit markets and an anaemic economy. The urge to talk up the economic recovery after so many false starts has turned the heads...
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We can end the despotism of finance, at a price
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...
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Bankers back to business as usual
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...
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Why are UK regulators so soft on British banks?
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...
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Official: the banks are the new enemy within
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...
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An inquiry into the banks at last. Great – or is it?
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...
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Financial weapons of mass destruction remain UK’s biggest unexploded bomb
Despite the recent howls from the City of London about the new criminal offence of reckless misconduct by senior bank executives, little or nothing has been done to curb the very real and big risks...
View ArticleWhy should rich posh crooks (aka bankers) get away with it?
The banks: how am I here again? Standing outside RBS, Paul Mason asks why action is not taken against crooked bankers. They plead not to over-regulate them, not to imprison them or they won’t be able...
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The Osborne forked tongue is cranking up for the Autumn Statement
The Chancellor’s response to the £1.1bn windfall handed to him by the fine on the banks is a classic in Osborne double-speak. We’re told the money will be “used for the wider public good”. He means tax...
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Banks’ culture is still fundamentally rotten
In a pre-election party political broadcast called the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor was at pains to tell us that his ‘long-term economic plan’, which he echoed 15 times like a demented obsessive...
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