Banking Blah (Part 1)

The thought of the nation’s taxpayers having to bail out champagne-guzzling bankers with their six-figure bonuses while many faced redundancy and feared for their financial future during the credit crunch made the banks fair game. And to be honest, I’ve never held back at voicing my despair at them.

 

 

We were promised by the then Labour Government that heads would roll. Back in 2008 then prime minister Gordon Brown said UK banks have been taking unnecessary risks. He said: “There have been abuses in our system... and they’ve got to be dealt with too.”

 

 

Since then a knighthood has been lost, millions more taxpayer pounds have been spent examining what went wrong and some fat cats lost their jobs. Interestingly, nobody has been charged with wrongdoing or spent time in jail. It appears being morally corrupt is perfectly legal in the UK.

 

 

Which makes last week’s decision by the Financial Conduct Authority to ditch their review into banking culture all the more baffling.

 

 

I really am starting to think this Government isn’t even trying anymore to pretend they don’t like banks. It is clear that W1 has move than a soft spot for the banking sector. The FCA insists it was their decision to ditch the banking review and nobody in Westminster forced their hand. Honest gov’na.

 

 

Equally baffling is the reasoning for their decision being that each bank is unique and could not be easily compared. That’s like the police saying we can’t really police the streets anymore because each street is slightly different and each burglar has unique reasons for theft.  

 

 

The whole point of the review was to determine whether programmes to shift culture were driving the right behaviour and solving issues such as risk taking and banker pay.

 

 

If we can’t trust the Government and Regulator to hold banks to account, what chance do we really have?