On Sat, 31 Dec 2011 05:33:55 +0000 Tim Watts wrote :

Brown failed to regulate the banks and Blair dissappeared up his own arse
with his desire to become an "international statesman" (ie get involved
in everyone's wars).

If they had proposed such regulation, every bank chief would have shouted
as to how this would reduce their profits by £x bn and governments should
stay out of things they didn't understand and leave them to the experts.
And the city, most of the press and the Conservative party would have been
on the side of the banks.

A lot of the blame goes to city analysts who get paid mega money to
research companies and report on them. Wasn't it the case that most of them
were offering 'buy' recommendations as banks crashed? If they had had quiet
words with the management and said "carry on like this and we'll change our
recommendation to 'sell'" then things might have turned out differently.
And if mega money analysts genuinely couldn't see any problems with the way
business was being conducted, what hope would regulators have had?

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on',
Melbourne, Australia www.greentram.com