RAPID responses June 28, 2012 Victim of Libor? [Re: Libor manipulation scandal is a disastrous own goal for City, yesterday] Back in the 1990s, my business had a Libor-linked loan with Barclays Commercial. Every quarter, when we came to settle, it mysteriously jumped 0.125 per cent or 2.5 per cent. After the first few times this happened, I started to [...]
The UK’s consumer debt burden is stifling hope of economic recovery June 27, 2012 THE Eurozone crisis has grabbed all the headlines. Yet Britain’s economic problems are not exactly the same as those of the Eurozone. In Euroland, the crisis has centred on banking and sovereign debt. In Britain, we have already given our banks plenty of capital. Remember the part-nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds TSB? It was in [...]
A hostile US Supreme Court risks trapping Obama in a political nightmare June 27, 2012 ALEXANDER Hamilton, the US Founding Father, described the judicial branch of government as the “least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution,” because it “has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society.” With the Supreme Court expected to rule [...]
A token solution to a seventeenth century dilemma June 27, 2012 IF TODAY was a morning in London 350 years ago, and you wanted to catch up on the latest news, market information and gossip, rather than picking up a copy of Morning Wire you would have gone to a coffee shop. In coffee shops you would find the latest pamphlets and printed news, and met [...]
Should the UK create an industrial strategy to guide its future economic development? June 27, 2012 YES Vicky Pryce The UK needs a strategy for industry and it must be better than what has gone before. All too often, our industrial policy has been reactive and incoherent. It has responded to lobbying and failed to offer consistent and equal support to sectors of industry. Good industrial policy must provide the tools [...]
RAPID RESPONSES June 27, 2012 Hester is not RBS [Re: Useless PR has turned NatWest’s woes into a corporate nightmare, yesterday] Having gone through James Hutchinson’s piece on the RBS computer failures, I was very surprised that all his attacks were directed on the person of Stephen Hester rather than the bank itself. I believe Hester has handled the situation [...]
Useless PR has turned NatWest’s woes into a corporate nightmare June 26, 2012 FOUR years ago, Stephen Hester was CEO of British Land. Not a company many people know of, let alone its boss. But today, not only is Hester running RBS – one of Britain’s best known banking groups and owners of NatWest – he is a household name. First it was his salary, then it was his [...]
Deficit spending didn’t end the Great Depression and it won’t save us now June 26, 2012 JOHN Maynard Keynes is on many minds at the moment. Lots of talking heads are prescribing a dose of Keynesian medicine: more spending and borrowing. However, Keynes didn’t get us out of the Great Depression and he should be ignored today. The 1930s and the Great Depression are often cited as an exemplar. Some assert [...]
Get ready for an Olympic summer of cyber attacks June 26, 2012 THE headline-grabbing words of warning from MI5 chief, Jonathan Evans, on Monday night dished up a timely reminder that the City could be in for a nervous summer. The comments, detailing the levels of cyber attacks on UK industry, have raised many eyebrows. It was the first speech from Evans in more than two years [...]
Is Lord Oakeshott right that RBS should be split up into a retail and investment bank? June 26, 2012 YES Richard Lloyd The RBS failure has highlighted just how critical basic banking services are to consumers and small businesses. It is crucial that high street banking is protected from instability. Our Future of Banking campaign recommended that essential retail banking services should be ring-fenced to help protect depositors from risk-taking elsewhere within the bank. [...]