One of the lessons of FinCR (financial crisis and recession) is clear. We have to get better at stress-testing. That is, we have to understand better than we did what circumstances can push banks over the edge into insolvency, and how regulators can spot weak banks in advance. Or so the story goes. The…
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There is a short and a long-term way to view the debate on structural reforms in banking. Short term, the question is, will the EU’s Liikanen knock out the UK’s Vickers? Or will Vickers prevail? The recommendations are mirror images of each other, one ring-fencing so-called retail banking the other ring-fencing the investment banking bit….
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Central banking used to be an august profession – highly respected, almost reverred, mainly because they looked after everybody’s money. But now that Wall Street can rake in more money than God, and the Fed and European Central Bank are still printing money to keep their economies from deflating, central bankers have lost their god-like…
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Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times, London and doyen of British commentators, has called for a reform of the global financial system (GFS). Rees-Mogg quotes Paul Volcker, who in a recent interview described the present period as one of the most difficult in history: “This is a recession on top of a complete financial…
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To some people’s surprise, the IMF under Christine Lagarde is pushing governments and stamping its authority on financial sector issues in ways that it has seldom done before.  Following my prediction of another financial crisis (RP’s Diary, 23 September), the IMF today argues that banking reforms do not go nearly far enough. The reforms have…
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The political tide is backing off the banks. Few politicians in Europe or the US are willing to support moves for more radical reform. They just want to get the banks lending again. In practice, that means pressing banks to accept the risk of big bad debts down the road…and so set the stage for…
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  Dropped in to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) to hear a talk by Dr Elaine Sternberg (she is the author of “Just Business: Business Ethics in Action”, a research fellow of the Centre for Business and Professional Ethics at Leeds University and IEA’s corporate governance guru; not many philosophers have also been entrepeneurs…
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Even before today’s job ad in The Economist, it is clear who will win the race. GOD, in the shape of Baron Augustine O’Donnell, former head of the British civil service, is set to be the next governor of the Bank of England. For a start, the job spec indicated that only superhumans need apply….
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Hello! Back to the grindstone after the holidays.  This Diary entry draws on evidence I submitted last week to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. It examines the link between the failure of money and continuing economic weakness.  How long will it take governments to realise that we will never get a lasting recovery without…
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“The Money Trap… offers a welcome alternative to most accounts of the Financial Crisis. The solutions may be on the radical side, but as growth forecasts continue to be revised downwards, and job figures continue to disappoint, such approaches may come to seem ever less radical.” Two weeks ago, delegates at the Republican National Convention nominated Mitt Romney…
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