Curbing the Banks

There are reports of earnest and productive talks going on between the banks and the government to improve relations and find common ground for a way froward. The apparent curb on bank bashing, an important talisman for all the parties in the general election, seems to be about needing the banks to achieve economic recovery.

That is self evident. Nobody, certainly not this Blog, is saying or has said that we do not need the banks. What we do not need are banks that are only marginally solvent, which favour property to all other form of lending thus inflating assets beyond their worth to the detriment of living standards and the economy, which engage in wild and ridiculous speculations for which they do not have capital to cover losses when they go bad and who then come begging the taxpayer for help, threatening they are too big to fail, after they have already stashed their own pockets with remuneration little short of preposterous.

We need a sound and socially useful banking system which is financially secure, prudently run and able to play an important role in the re-design of a shatterd economic model, which can then be re-built into a secure and lasting recovery. Such banks will value the national interest as highly or beyond their own, as this is an element, little mentioned, of any attempt to create a big society. Such banks will also separate their speculative trading into ring fenced companies which can and will be allowed to fail, in which such failures both the bankers and their shareholders, who have profited to excess from these gambling activities, will then lose  all.