A thunderous collapse could drown out the clamour over banking reform
The banking lobby doth protest too much, methinks — to misquote Hamlet’s mother — and so doth its enemies, not to mention the opponents of planning reform. In fact, there’s a whole lot of grandstanding going on in the public arena which I fear may suddenly be silenced either by a thunderous collapse of the eurozone or the giant toilet-flush that will signal the onset of renewed global recession.
Or both. And if that sounds unusually gloomy for this column, I refer you to this week’s news that in August the US economy generated no new jobs at all and the UK service sector (including hotels, catering, transport and business services) suffered its sharpest slowdown since the foot-and-mouth crisis in 2001. Combine that data with my own analysis last week of the paralysis threatening the European banking system, and even Mr Happy might feel it’s time to buy gold and batten down the hatches.
Meanwhile, the jousting over banking reform continues ahead of Monday’s release of the final report by Sir John Vickers’ Independent Commission.
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