Business Comment

Jeremy Warner: Here's one approach to miscreant banks – just break them up

Outlook Time to bring back Glass-Steagall, the legislation introduced in the US in the 1930s to enforce a rigid separation between ordinary commercial banking and the fee-driven inventiveness of investment banking? I'm pleased to see that my once lonely campaign to reinstate this division, abandoned under the Clinton administration in the late 1990s, seems to be attracting a growing following.

Inside Business Comment

Jeremy Warner: Bank Governor's reverse ferret may be wrong

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

Outlook Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, is like the sinner who repents. Having been far too cautious in the early stages of the credit crunch when he was more concerned with the principles of moral hazard than saving the banking system, he now implicitly criticises our European neighbours for an insufficiently robust macro-economic response to the crisis. Looking at the latest shock forecasts from the International Monetary Fund, it is perhaps easy to see why Mr King has taken so wholeheartedly to throwing everything he has, including the kitchen sink, at the problem. The IMF is predicting a 3.8 per cent contraction in the UK economy this year, plus a bit more the year after. This would make us worse than any other advanced economic region other than Japan.

David Prosser: Loan insurance is another disgraceful banking scandal

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Outlook Not since the personal pension debacle of the early 1990s has there been such a systematic attempt to mislead and mis-sell to consumers. What a shame that it is the financial services industry that is once again at fault.

David Prosser: Barclays battles to avoid the state's embrace

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Outlook Barclays Bank keeps pulling rabbits out of the hat in order to avoid throwing in its lot with the British taxpayer. Last autumn, when everyone assumed it would have to sell a chunk of equity to the state to boost its capital strength, it instead managed to do a deal – albeit a controversial one – with the Middle East. And now the sale of iShares, its exchange-traded fund business, may enable it to avoid participation in the asset protection scheme.

David Prosser: Bernanke does his best to talk us into a recovery

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Outlook Does the US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, really see some signs of green economic shoots out there? Back home, when Baroness Vadera dared to talk positive a couple of months ago, she was lampooned, yet Mr Bernanke's cautious optimism was a real shot in the arm for global stock markets yesterday.

Stephen King: The rest of the world still has a lot to learn from the Japanese

Monday, 16 March 2009

What, today, counts as economic policy success? The G20 finance ministers, pictured, promised over the weekend to "take whatever action is necessary until growth is restored." That, though, is a rather weak formulation. Even after the Great Depression, growth eventually made a welcome return. The bigger concerns surely relate to the length and depth of the current downswing and, importantly, the likely pace of growth once the world economy bottoms out. Merely promising a restoration of growth at some unspecified future point doesn't quite do the trick.

Margareta Pagano: Memo to Sants - don't unleash a mad-dog regulator

Sunday, 15 March 2009

FSA should focus on putting principles into practice

Hamish McRae: Different strokes for different folks - the only conclusion for the summit

Sunday, 15 March 2009

So the Group of 20 finance ministers are in England to prepare for the summit of their heads of government next month. Yawn. There is an inevitable presumption that international meetings matter on the grounds it is better to coordinate economic policies, but in this case it would probably be better if the different countries followed different policies. They are, after all, in different situations. All face the global slowdown this year, but their economies have different structures and their underlying fiscal and monetary situations are different, too. So they need different approaches.

David Prosser: The end of Swiss banking? If so, it’s about time too

Saturday, 14 March 2009

Outlook: So the credit crunch has achieved something the world had been trying to do for more than 70 years: getting the Swiss to give up more information on who has stashed what in the country's secret bank accounts.

David Prosser: Bankers will just have to get by on lower salaries

Saturday, 14 March 2009

Outlook: Who says it would be impossible to cap bankers' pay? In Ireland, they've just done exactly that. The Irish government has told the seven banks which now have the benefit of a state guarantee underwriting them that they must pay executives no more than €500,000 a year. That goes even further than the recommendat-ions drawn up by an Irish committee on bankers' pay, which said existing salaries for Ireland's top bankers, around €700,000, were justifiable.

David Prosser: Opec members playing the same old games

Saturday, 14 March 2009

Outlook: Opec wasn't giving much away yesterday as its staff prepared for the cartel's latest summit, which takes places in Vienna tomorrow. On balance, however, another cut in production is more than likely. Opec's own analysis suggests global demand for oil this year may be even lower than previously thought. It also points out that developed countries have almost two months' worth of oil stockpiled.

More business comment: