|
|
|
The new mantra for a cleaner City: regulation, regulation, regulation Larry Elliott and Jill Treanor A demand by Britain's financial watchdog today for dozens more regulators to police the City will have been boosted by the speculative - and illegal - bear raid on HBOS shares last week. That attack has added to growing calls since the start of the credit crunch for a beefed-up regulatory regime. Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy will discuss possible reforms of the financial system at their summit this week, while Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, made it clear last week that he favoured a policy of tough love for banks. "We're going to lend to them and protect them, shouldn't they be regulated?" he said. UK Treasury sources said financial reform will be top of the agenda when finance ministers and central bank governors from the G7 meet in Washington next month. Alistair Darling is looking for greater cross-border cooperation to prevent a recurrence of the recent turbulence.
(Article continues below) Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, agrees there should be a greater role for the G7 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the body that represents 30 rich countries, but says there is a need for more than just greater transparency and accountability. "There has to be a period of re-regulation. We have highly leveraged institutions such as hedge funds and private equity firms that are essentially pyramid selling and creating a mountain of instability based on debt. That is now unwinding in a dangerous way." Some critics of Wall Street and the City would like to see the more "toxic" types of financial instruments banned. Others say the key to stability is far tougher control over money and credit creation. At the moment, these are not on the agenda and possible reforms fall into the following categories:
|
|
|
| PRISON
PLANET.com Copyright © 2002-2008 Alex Jones
All rights reserved.
|
Yahoo! MyWeb
