- The Guardian: Bank of England official calls for bespoke accounting standards for banks
- The Telegraph: New bank accounting rules needed to avoid another crisis, says BoE’s Haldane
The established UK newspapers, The Telegraph and The Guardian, are regarded as the standard bearers of the political right and left respectively. The gravity of the banking crisis is clearly apolitical and public awareness is now growing that employees at RBS, effectively civil servants, are simply plundering taxpayer bailout funds for personal gain via wrong accounting. The taxpayer owns just under half of Lloyds HBOS, and despite this minority shareholding the same point applies. Failure of the state regulators to act many months after this news was broken outrages everyone from Telegraph readers to the Occupy movement.
The significance of the failure of the UK ‘s Coalition Government to back Steve Baker MP’s March 2011 Bill is now dawning. It should now be embraced by the Chancellor as an essential first step to understanding how badly the bailouts have failed.
Most importantly, payments of bonuses this month should be frozen whilst these accounts are properly assessed. If we at Cobden Partners are correct, and the payments are in truth planned to be made out of capital, not profits, then this is a breach of UK Company Law and proceedings should follow.
