The recession must be over (see recent posts) because the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the government’s designated watchdog, has dared to criticise some of the performance bonuses paid to financiers during the past decade. He even used some colourful language about the insitutions calling them ‘socially useless.’
The Mirror put some of what he suggested into tabloideese this morning – Watchdog boss wants fatcat tax, and clearly, Mr Turner’s PR team are doing a fine job. Hamish McRae in The Independent gives some context – the FSA is almost certain to be abolished if the Tories win the election – Bloomberg provide more here too.
There’s a balanced opinion piece on what was said, and meant, available from Reuters here and you can read the original interview Turner gave to Prospect magazine here (but you will need a subscription to see all of it).
If the recovery continues like this expect a lively autumn.
Rejoice, rejoice. The Institute of Chartered Accountants reports (via the BBC) that their small sample survey of business confidence is higher than it has been for two years. Clearly, it’s great news – only the mass youth unemployment, financial crash, party political blame games and the election to survive now.
Something to pep up a Monday morning.
In between the summer’s torrential rainfall and the sightings of imminent economic recovery (mainly spotted by employees of Goldman Sachs and the government) some other things have been visible.
- The high street lending (hah!) banks continue to hoard cash from the government’s kindly not-too-many-questions-asked purchase of their dodgy financial assets. Some of the remaining independent institutions announce ‘encouraging’ profits while laying off staff. The semi-nationalised ones announce enormous losses and continue laying off staff.
- The Bank of England has found it necessary to allow another massive invention of money (£50Bn) so that someone will continue to buy the ballooning UK national government debt (gilts). This is caused, in part, by our ongoing bail out of the banks.
- And, unhappily, in the London surburb of Ealing, a Poundland has had to shut down, no doubt laying off staff too.
Kudos to Will Sturgeon on a nice piece of reporting.
The latest version of the ‘voluntary’ UK National Identity Card was launched at the end of last week. It was, after all, the start of the silly season.
The man now charged with mantaining the impression that this might actually happen under a Labour government is the new Home Secretary, Alan Johnson. During the spring, Johnson was widely touted as the man to replace Gordon Brown if Labour had a leadership election.
There is precious little in UK public life which is quite like being given the job as Home Secretary to make you unpopular and Jonathan Calder explains the grubby whys and political wherefores of this here.
If you are interested in the official view of how the project is proceeding you may read an interview with Annette Vernon, the civil servant in the Home Office, who has the current responsibility. (Link from Silicon.com).
This drawing was made for campaign group NO2ID.
A preparatory drawing of the British cyclist Mark Cavendish who won the last stage of the 2009 Tour de France on the Champs Elysee in Paris yesterday. His compatriot, Bradley Wiggins, finished fourth overall which equalled the best ever result by a Briton.
