Tag Archives: banking
Central banks remain stuck in the trap
Mervyn King has mounted a defence of inflation targeting. Monetary policy, he claims, is part of the solution to the crisis, not part of the problem. This view was echoed by many official spokesmen at the recent IMF meeting in Tokyo. Christine Lagarde praised the central banks. There are quite minor…
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New entry to Bank of England governor stakes
My apologies to subscribers who – following my tip – have placed bets on Gus O’Donnell to be next Bank of England Governor (RP’s Diary 14/09/12). They might lose their money. How did I come to overlook the irresistible charms of (Lord) Terry Burns? Terry is a pukka economist who followed a respectable academic…
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Banks that go bust
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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Tectonic plates shift
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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Towards the next crash
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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Did unethical conduct cause the crisis?
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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Come on guys!
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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Hypocrisy does not help
The financial crisis that began on this date in August 2007 has not ended. It continues, and will continue so long as policy-makers and economists fail to learn its lessons. Instead, what we have is a mountain of hypocrisy. Almost everybody is being economical with the truth. This applies to central bankers, financial regulators and…
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Nicolas Krul writes:
Picking up on Robert’s last story, we must look to the ECB to restore trust in financial intermediation. Yes, the developed world faces another year of stagnation and interacting imbalances that amplify risk aversion and spread the fear of spending. But there is no surprise in the new setback. With budgets in disarray and rising…
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Banish Europe’s banking ghosts
The discussion about the need for a ‘banking union’ in the Euro area needs to focus on the key issues, just as does the debate on the euro crisis as a whole. What matters in deciding whether to assist a country to stay in the euro is its political will to reform. The test is…
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