There’s been some desperate backpeddling and smoke blowing from you know who. No inquiry into hte Co Op Bank! It’s coke and rent boys, nothing to do with banking!
George Osborne has used beefed-up new financial regulatory powers for the first time to order an independent investigation into the near downfall of the Co-operative Bank.
The Chancellor confirmed the inquiry under the Financial Services Act just hours after the raft of financial and regulatory failings that has mired the mutualised lender in scandal were discussed at a board meeting of the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA).
But the bank did indeed go bust. So, these new powers to have inquiries, powers that our unnamed retired accountant from Wandsworth were so insistent must be created and used, perhaps this is indeed a good opportunity to use them?
It wasn’t coke and rent boys that brought the bank down so perhaps we should find out what it was?
And as to the insistence that no, nooooo, we should have an inquiry into HSBC instead, over that Mexican money moving business. Smoke blowing again: for the US has rather had an investigation into the Mexican money moving business, hasn’t it? That’s how we know about it, isn’t it?
The joy here though is seeing Ritchie (for it is he!) demanding greater regulatory powers over the banks then insisting that there shouldn’t be use of these new powers on a bank he likes.
Hmm.
‘Back pedalling’ is what you mean, but that seems trivial compared to the Telegraph’s raft made of mud.
It isn’t just HSBC that should be subject to an enquiry. Oh no; David Cameron’s gov’t also has questions to answer. N.B. That is most explicitly Cameron’s gov’t; not the gov’t and regulator in place at the time of the Britannia takeover.
He still hasn’t been able to tell me, however, exactly what that role was. And no, “you’re a neoliberal” doesn’t really count as an answer.
On the plus side, the nonsense of the magic money tree, the banks creating money out of thin air, seems finally to be dead.
Candidly, I feel vindicated.
Ritchie… hypocrisy. Who’da thunk it?
I wonder whether Murphy ripped to the tits on crack and ketamine would be more or less odious than regular Murphy.
An enquiry into the failure of the co-op bank. I will save them some money. The co-op was bought down by bad lending decisions. END OF STORY.
It is what brings down all retail banks, its called maturity transformation people. You need to make sure you loan money to people who can pay it back. Whether the bad lending decisions were those of the co-op of britannia is now irrelevant but I suppose there are lots of people around who like playing in the Shit after it has hit the fan,,