Tag Archives: UK banking

In the Sunday Times (of London) today, Peter Boone and I address what the British authorities can do to break their version of the boom-bust-bailout cycle.

There is a certain amount of fatalism about these issues in Europe.  This is misplaced.  In the short-term, European policymakers have an important opportunity to diminish the political power of big banks, particularly because peer review – through the European Commission, the G20, and even the IMF – is more likely to have impact there than in the United States.

It’s an open question whether the degree of ideological capture by finance was stronger over the past decade in the US or the UK.  But at least leading UK policymakers have started to push back against their banks; in the US, Paul Volcker remains a relatively lonely quasi-official voice.

By Simon Johnson