A recipe to stem bank hate
As bankers including Barclays' Bob Diamond lose the trust of the market, it will take more than saying sorry to restore reputations. Banks need to embrace transparency and redefine why they exist.
You must be logged in to read this article
Not a member yet? Register today ›
Business Spectator is available on all of your devices so you can access the latest news and commentary where and how you like
Register now ›
Already a member? Sign in here
- Log in to post comments
Comments on this article
Comments PolicyThere's another "s" – "separate" – from the taxpayers' point of view by far the most important (A recipe to stem bank hate, July 3). They or we need to separate the investment banking/trading/gambling side from the rest, and from government guarantees. Then the investors who want large short term gains and bankers who expect enormous salaries and bonuses can play that game at their own risk.
I think it is hard for anyone who has received a very expensive (to them) computer generated letter (therefore costing a few cents) advising them that they are overdrawn, often also by cents – and as literally millions of these have been sent where the account holder actually did nothing wrong (payments for instance were made automatically at midnight on the 30th, an account was credited with the salary 12.00.01AM on the 1st), which if you're prepared to go and waste several hours and fight with the bank you can get back, the banks have vast, probably unclimbable mountain between them and trust, let alone liking (A recipe to stem bank hate, July 3). Transparency, along with honesty, would destroy them. We have no real alternatives, so they'll limp on, hated and quite possibly eventually victimised.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! (A recipe to stem bank hate, July 3). Oh the British and their finely honed and unique sense of humour! Ms Tett is an excellent exponent of irony, that much must be plain. Of course, this is Diamond Bob, she's talking about. The guy that said he was sick to the back teeth of pretending to be sorry for his and banking's part in the GFC. Like another Bob, Capn Bob Maxwell, there is a care quotient at play here, or isn't as the case may be. Diamond Bob doesn't care what some little scribbler in the FT thinks, any more than than he cares about anything other than his bonus and any more than Capn Bob cared about Mirror Group emplyees when he plundered their superannuation fund. Just on the FT, it's where the Alex cartoon strip appears. Long-term observers have accepted it more as an accurate reflection of the attitudes in the City than the fun that it also is.