economonkey

Am I the only person who finds this a bit sinister? The chancellor, Alastair Darling wants the Bank of England to secretly provide emergency funds to rescue banks which have run into trouble. This sounds wildly undemocratic to me – banks trade on their reputation and stability, and if a bank is being mismanaged so badly that it needs emergency funding, then the public deserves to know, especially when those funds are being provided by taxpayers. To me this sounds like the government is saying: “We want to cover up irresponsible practices in the financial services sector, and we’re going to use your money to do it, suckers!”

From the story: Under the plans, a “period of non-disclosure” would be allowed so that there is not an “immediate adverse impact on consumer confidence”.  The English translation of this double-speak is: “The public must be kept in the dark so they don’t suddenly start questioning the wisdom of handing over their hard earned money to a badly managed bank.”

It’s starting to look as though all financial services organisations have the privileged status of being “too big to fail” in Gordon Brown’s Britain – they can be as reckless and irresponsible as they like in pursuit of massive, endless profits to line their own pockets, safe in the knowledge that the British taxpayer will always be ready to give them an extra lifeline when things go wrong. Even if the taxpayer never gets to find out about it…