Sunday 18 December 2011

Osborne & Cable - 'Spinmasters Extraordinary'

From Politics Home we learn:
"Vince Cable says he and George Osborne will accept the recommendations of the Vickers Commission on banking in full, with the Government tomorrow launching a package of reforms, including separating banks' retail and investment arms.
Dr Cable told the Andrew Marr Show this morning: “I’m working together with the Chancellor on this; we’ve come to a common view, and we’re going to proceed with it. Moreover, we’re going to get on with it. The legislation is going to be completed within this Parliament. It’s got to be done; we can’t have a position where the big banks are too big to fail.”
Labour's Chuka Umunna said it was "very important" that all the recommendations were implemented, and called for Sir John Vickers to report back in a year on how the implementation was progressing. The Shadow Business Secretary also said the Government should bring forward plans to refer banks to the Competition Commission."
Odd therefore there is no mention that on 20 July 2011, the Commission adopted a legislative package to strengthen the regulation of the banking sector. The proposal replaces the current Capital Requirements Directives (2006/48 and 2006/49) with a Directive and a Regulation and constitutes another major step towards creating a sounder and safer financial system (or so they say!). The directive governs the access to deposit-taking activities while the regulation establishes the prudential requirements institutions need to respect. Neither is there any mention of this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or finally, this.


Osborne is supposedly Chancellor of the Exchequer, while Cable is supposedly Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. Spheroids - they are no more than Office Managers implementing decisions taken by the Muscles from Brussels! Yet again we see impending EU legislation being passed off as 'action being taken' by British politicians when, in reality, that is not so.


And still there persists those who maintain that our politicians should not be introduced to their 'reserved lamp post'?


Afterthought: Perhaps when we as a nation do regain our independence, assuming he is still alive we could hire the Muscles from Brussels to wipe out the Muscles from Brussels? Just a thought..........

4 comments:

Ian Hills said...

Good post wfw. From

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:331:0012:0047:EN:PDF

"...The Authority may temporarily prohibit or restrict certain financial activities that threaten the orderly functioning and integ­rity of financial markets or the stability of the whole or part of the financial system in the Union...."

and there's a whole lot more there too.

Anonymous said...

Good post WfW, but not sure that wherever the concept was derived, that it is a bad idea…

You know my hostility to all things EU and LibLabCON, but in this case I would argue that the hiatus of the banking disaster was directly rooted in Labour's creation of the FSA (I don't know, but that may have been initiated by the EC too?), along with the ensuing notion that banks are too big to fail, which is utter nonsense.

Cast your mind back to when we were children ��, and remember that Magna Carta has several clauses that deal with what business 'The Jews' (mediaeval code for banks) could/should only be engaged in, namely usury and nothing else.

So splitting the usury side from the investment side, remains a good idea, regardless of which denizen it originated from.

Anonymous said...

He had to oppose those.
The threat, not just to europe but the whole world, comes from the worlds premier financial center in dodgy financial dealing: London.

"the UK debt, when one adds to its more tenable sovereign debt tranche all the other debt carried on UK books (and thus making the transfer of private debt to the public balance sheet impossible), is nearly ten times greater than the country's GDP"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/psssst-france-here-why-you-may-want-cool-it-britain-bashing-uks-950-debt-gdp

Which is WHY he couldn't agree to any proposals, even though the coming regulations WILL affect this country. Still, bankers don't have to actually BE here do they ?

WitteringsfromWitney said...

IH, r_w & Anon,

We need to remember here that there is also in the mix Basel III. In fact what the EU is implementing in their unique fashion is those decisions reached at Basel III.

The pool is getting murkier.......