Reform comes to the City

The Chancellor’s speech last night at the Mansion House was hugely encouraging. At last there is evidence that the nature of the problems we face as well as the scale is understood. I am not very particular about the nature of regulation. Any logical system properly organised will work. The current system was illogical and failed. But the real failure was in control. An economy on any scale, whether personal, local, national or global is like a fire. Controlled and burning within its boundaries it is a vital resource upon which all civilisation depends for almost everything. Left to burn out of control it eventually consumes all.

The historic mistake was to believe economic activity could be regulated so that it would not have to be controlled. The result is a banking system which ran amok pouring money into domestic and commercial property massively inflating above their worth these assets and fuelling personal and national debt beyond the capacity to manage and in some cases ever to repay. Meanwhile industry and innovation were starved of funds. We now have an economy in debt up to the gills and a complete imbalance between wealth creation and consumption.

This blog is happy with the new regulatory proposals but applauds to the rafters the new powers of the Bank of England to control an overheating economy by shutting off funds. In other words the new Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England with the remit to control (or conversely boost) overheating (or under-performing) segments of the economy is the absolute key safeguard from the lunatic disregard for reality which got us and the West into this mess in the beginning.

As set out in my book 2010 A Blueprint For Change, from a more humble voice in a more rustic setting  than the grandeur of the Mansion House, there are certain matters of fact and logic at the core of an economy, whatever  political ideology guides it, and if it is to work, these have to be stuck to.  There are no clever theories nor wonder innovations which can circumvent the truths at the core. It is a great relief to discover we have a Chancellor who understands this (the Bank Governor has known this for quite a while). We must hope he can deliver. He has gone up many notches in my estimation and I am inclined to believe he can.