Posts
Extracts from a City diary, from an insider working in a commercial bank ...
"Whilst we are looking to increase our net lending, it will only be to those companies who have a better credit rating than we do - which means only the top businesses, posting good results and having recovered or stayed immune from the crunch, rather than small and medium sized businesses ...
... What has proved to be bad is not the potential failure of a lender, but the hundreds of thousands of unemployed people, the stifling of innovation and investment, and the massive tax liability for generations to come ...
The reality is that we have had two years of predominantly useless noise and an impression that things are being done. We are still no further forward than what should have been blatantly obvious before we got into this mess ...
... A crash in an industry which was previously considered impervious and monolithic you would hope would result in profound change and enlightenment - core principles ripped up and rebuilt. I am a strong believer in the potential of creative destruction but there is a void-like gap in financial and regulatory innovation or debate. Wealthy investment banks have become even wealthier - with minimal incentive to reform as they now have even fewer competitors ...
The government has jettisoned moral hazard by bailing out terrible lenders with universal quantitative easing. Business failure, the ultimate sanction of the free market, has been removed".
More observations of reality from people who care ... so when will apathy reduce and people take responsibility for changing it ... ?
