Banks: neo-liberals beat the regulators
“After the financial crisis”, in 2008, noted John Authers in the Financial Times of 16 July, “it was beyond argument that existing regulations had failed, and would need to be rethought. “Only a few months ago, it looked as though the Great Re-regulation might turn into a Great Revenge, as politicians planned to squeeze the banks”. In the last few months, inertia, the huge political and social power of high finance, the absence of an energetic lobby-group within the wider capitalist class for a definite scheme of “re-regulation”, and the leanings of most political leaders, have won out. The...