By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: November 11th, 2012 Stability of leadership has been confirmed in the US and China – now they need stability in their economies, or the world will suffer. By Ian Fraser Today’s global economy is like a drunk meandering his way across a busy street after a year-long binge [...]
November 6th, 2012 By Gordon Neave Picture: The Economist During the late 1980s and early 1990s British bankers changed for the worse. Having spent most of the past three centuries as financial herbivores — solid, reliable and rational members of the community — they metamorphosed into wild, hungry carnivores. Fuelled by commissions, bonuses and greed, [...]
October 10th, 2012 Today the Financial Services Authority formally relaxed capital and liquidity rules on UK banks in the vague hope this might kickstart lending and do something to ensure the UK economy can pick itself up off the floor. The Canary Wharf-based regulator also said that it would not require banks to hold extra [...]
October 2nd, 2012 Speaking to an audience of students and finance industry insiders at the London School of Economics yesterday, Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester renounced the Friedman Doctrine that has done so much damage to our economy and society since the 1970s. Hester said that banks and other companies have been [...]
September 26th, 2012 [Ian Fraser's introduction] In this speech, Robert Jenkins blows apart the self-serving myths that bankers and their lobbyists have been peddling since the financial crisis ripped apart the global financial system in 2007-. He also explains that, unfortunately ‘captured’ regulators and politicians have swallowed the myths whole. The unsurprising consequence is that post-crisis [...]
By Prem Sikka, University of Essex July 8th, 2012 The role of Barclays bank in manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) continues to dominate international financial media. The bank has already attracted fines from regulators in the UK and theUSA. But further revelations are likely as US Senate Committees are flexing their muscles, the UK [...]
June 29th, 2012 This is banking’s ‘Milly Dowler’ moment. Finally the blinkers are off and the rest of the world (by which I mean people like leading politicians and the mainstream commentariat) is waking up to the culture of self serving greed and corruption that has infested the UK’s banking sector, about which I’ve been [...]
January 7th, 2012 I was surprised and disappointed when I opened my copy of The Economist on Friday morning. The magazine is running a feebly-argued propaganda piece headlined “Save the City” as its cover story. The piece vaunts the “skills” that are to be found in the City of London and seeks to persuade us [...]
December 16th, 2011 Here is the half hour interview I gave to Dori Smith of US-based Talk Nation Radio on December 9th, 2011. There theme is the wilful blindness of the Financial Services Authority to corruption in the UK banking and finance sector. Produced by Dori Smith in Storrs, Connecticut, USA Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or [...]
November 24th, 2011 Andrew Brigden of Fathom Consulting, a London-based economic and financial markets consultancy, has been poring over the latest UK economic data and concluded that austerity isn’t working for the UK economy. He says:- “Excluding government consumption, final domestic demand is currently 9.1% below its pre-recession peak and is just 1% higher than its trough. [...]