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chivalrousStephenG

Listed below are comments made by chivalrousStephenG between Thursday, 9th July 2009 and Thursday, 22nd October 2009.

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Bank reform: The radical way 10:40pm on 22 Oct 2009 It really is pretty desperate to describe the range of detailed bureaucratic interventions proposed by te FSA as radical. The Bank's proposals to break up the current banking conglomerates, to increase competition and compartmentalise failure, combined with increased reserve requirements, are a much more fundamental and elegant solution. This would get to the root of the matter - more competition to cut overcharging and drive value for money, higher reserves to rein in speculation and cover the costs of failure, plus smaller banks to contain systemic impacts. Seems obvious really, and more potent than any amount of poliical posturing, public lectures, codes of conduct etc etc
Brown and markets 08:50am on 30 Sep 2009 Not sure what his post has to do with business - it is a political statement of the obvious. I fear Pesto's knighthood is now in the bin though.
Gordon Brown's monuments 09:27am on 25 Sep 2009 Good to see such robust responses to this panegyric posting. I had feared Pesto had been cut off from his source recently but this return to form makes me think that young Murdoch may after all have a point about the BBC
Lloyds: Mind the GAPS 5:15pm on 21 Sep 2009 majorroadaheadagain

"The second point is that some of the Lloyds shareholders had it coming and deserve what they got. These are the institutional shareholders who owned shares in both bank. They screwed up a decent bank in the process of trying to save their HBOS bacon. Chumps of the year?"

Is it possible that even these shareholders would have been better off, in retrospect, if they had voted against the merger? I certainly have a hunch that once Lloyds has finished being bailed out, divested etc, it will have a lower value and market share than before the merger. That really would be an astonishing indictment of the Board
Lloyds: Mind the GAPS 2:51pm on 21 Sep 2009 How about another approach - putting their wholly owned subsidiary, HBOS, into administration?
Can governments squeeze bankers' pay? 12:02pm on 04 Sep 2009 The level of bankers' pay or bonuses should only be the concern of those who employ or fund them, who are at risk of financial loss from their mistakes, or their customers in case of high pay being the result of monopoly power.

It follows that we the taxpayers should only be concerned if we have to fund the clear up when the bankers get it wrong: this is the only convincing argument, in my view, for separating investment banking from the more retail oriented commercial banking, severing the former from all state guarantees. Fiddling around with Tobin taxes and the like will just create jobs for accountants, tax collecters and such like socially worthless professions.

As to competition, our governments seem to have been raising barriers to entry by increasing reserve requirements, promoting giant banks etc. Perhaps regulations actually need to be relaxed for investment banking?
Can governments squeeze bankers' pay? 10:08am on 04 Sep 2009 I would like to see some analysis on where LLoyds Banking Group is going now, why it does not want to go forward with the marvellous APS deal, which pieces is it likely to sell as the EU overturns the UK Governments nonchalant position the monopoly effects of the HBOS takeover.

Further, once all this is complete, will Lloyds be a smaller, less valuable business than it would have been without the takeover of HBOS? Would those institutions with shareholdings in Lloyds and HBOS have actually been better off simply writing off HBOS rather than supporting the merger?
Goldman: Recession? What recession? 10:03pm on 15 Jul 2009 A more prudent company might have used these profits to boost reserves, especially so soonafter repaying the USG bailout. Perhaps thougfh, knowing such profits may not be repeated, GS are simply cashing in while they can.
News of the World bugged Sun editor 6:29pm on 10 Jul 2009 It really is staggering to read this tripe in a Business blog. Anyway, at the time the bugging took place, was not the News International Empire arm in arm with NuLab?
Bankers more confused 09:47am on 09 Jul 2009 @48 whatevernext1 wrote:
"does Osborne give anyone any confidence that he knows what he's doing, and is not just jumping on bandwagons? I am beginning to wonder whether the Tories will be as bad as Labour."

I would put my money on Cameron et al repeating the Heath Government - try the right, quite painful medicine for 12-18 months, followed by severe loss of nerve.

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