Intellectual Vacuum Persists Within UK Economic Policy

Northern Rock, the mismanaged bank, collapsed in 2007. Early in 2008 the global banking sector started to creak on its foundations before reaching near implosion in September 2008. Enough time has passed, you would think, for the UK regulatory bodies to have replaced the risk management by “box-ticking” process with something more robust. Wrong.

100 weeks have passed since it was blindingly obvious that a total over-haul of financial regulation was required and the latest government sponsored report, from the Treasury Select Committee, has described the current supervisory framework as a “muddle”. The committee also suggested that the measures to date were “merely re-branding” and that there remains a void of ownership in “strategic decisions and executive action”. They are not referring to the old system. They are describing the current structure.

Britain wasn’t always a 2nd class nation in terms of financial and economic leadership. 80 years ago we were lucky enough to have possibly the most gifted economist that ever lived, John Maynard Keynes, to advise the government on economic and financial matters.