It is my opinion that Mervyn King is the best Governor in my lifetime. His grasp of what is wrong with the banks far exceeds the grasp of most politicians. He is entirely in tune with the experience of the country, which has suffered a blow to its economy which equates to the cost of a major war. He is in tune, too, with people who run the SME businesses which are the backbone of the economy. He is possessed of a powerful intellect and has already achieved a glittering career as an academic economist. Above all he understands what is wrong with the banks. In a word it is the bankers.
Their attitude, their business model, their financial morality, their social responsibility and their mission, all fall far short of those of their pre-big bang forebears. Many do not know what they are doing. Those who do, frequently have no idea, or do not care, about its effect. All are clever, but at the same time fools. A good number are spivs. Their industry has very nearly broken the western economic structure overall. In a some cases, Ireland for example, it has ruined the financial solvency of nations. Through all this period, the West has advanced little. Such advances as have come, have been driven by new technology, in which the banks have invested hardly at all. The balance of economic power is now shifted to the East, to whom we have to look to pay a quarter of our the monthly bills.
Through this frittering of the endeavours of an industrious and trusting population, terrible scars have opened in the social landscape which would have shocked even Victorian reformers and utterly dismayed the Macmillans and Wilsons of the post war social settlement. Nowhere has there been a modern politician willing to stand up the these hedonistic zealots, least of all among the ranks of New Labour. One or two lurk in the Coalition, but dithering over the banks and bankers by Osborne and Cameron has held them back. Mervyn King has now spoken.
This should give the reformers courage. If, when the IBC reports, Osborne does not implement its recommendations in timely fashion in the face of what will be near hysterical opposition from the bankers, the Tory party will be deserted entirely by its loyalist core of middle England SMEs. Without them it will lose any election, whatever the voting system.