Liable in the courts or to the shareholders or to the creditors? Kind of the key information I’d hope a policy proposal would contain. It may have been edited out, but somehow I doubt it.

Incidentally, saying that bankers should be liable, then suggesting that cutting regulations is a problem seems odd – the more regulations, the less you are directly liable for any decision because you can shelter behind the regulations and not have personal responsibility. Again, we can’t judge from this snippet, but this looks like something that has not been thought through (or someone who somehow believes that more regulation = more responsibility, despite all the evidence).

A change in the law to ensure that incompetent bankers can be held properly accountable for the harm they can cause.

I assume he’d be fine with a retrospective change in the law such that incompetent politicans can be held properly accountable for the harm they cause. I seem to remember the Rural Payments Agency fiasco actually driving some farmers to suicide.

A change in the law to ensure that incompetent bankers can be held properly accountable for the harm they can cause.

Actually, we already have a raft of such laws – if what he means is the creation of a new law that says a director can be prosecuted if a company goes bust, then it would need to be so tightly limited to ensure a blameless director isn’t jailed through no fault of their own as to be impotent anyway.

Ensure that any major bank acquisition in future needs approval by financial regulators and write that into law.

Already exists – not sure what he is talking about with that one.

Ensure City adviser firms don’t bias their advice because fees are larger if big takeovers get the go ahead.

Also already exists – any advisory firm that did such a thing could be sued out of existence by the losing shareholders and shut down by the regulators. Again, not really clear what he is proposing to add to the existing systems.

In fact, having now read a bit more than a press release, these are all the recommendations of the FSA aren’t they? Labour are just endorsing them.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/078f036a-24d1-11e1-ac4b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1gJoBNveY

Already exists – not sure what he is talking about with that one

The Takeover Panel is a non-statutory body.

No need for dramatic changes to the law or massive regulatory changes.

We could try simply forcing banks to buy government bonds to the value of their shareholder dividends and ‘excess’ pay (say, anything over 4 times median full-time earnings). Employees/shareholders are then given those bonds in lieu of salary/dividends. The bonds pay a fair rate of interest but in the event of a bailout the government cancels the bonds and injects the equivalent amount of capital into the bank. Holders of the cancelled bonds are compensated by giving them an equity stake in recapitalised bank.

This way, if you run a boring, prudent, socially useful bank and you do it well you get well paid.

If, on the other hand you run your bank into the ground all you end up with are shares in a bank that aren’t worth all that much. If banks don’t like it then we should remove their licence to take deposits.

Iceland’s On-going Revolution
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/01/1001662/-Icelands-On-going-Revolution
They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.