UK Banks Borrow Heavily from US Conservative Response to Bank Crisis

link here to article

Demos, a formerly left leaning, organization has written a pamphlet critical of the work done by the Independent Banking Commission (IBC) in the UK. The IBC Preliminary Report will be released in April and the final report is expected in September.
The Demos response was authored by a former MP Kitty Ussher and this article shows that her response makes many of the recommendations found in the Financial Crisis Primer which was published by conservatives who dissented from the majority report of the US commission which has already filed its report

This article begins its criticism of the Demos pamphlet by describing how the Demos Board was taken over by conservatives in 2009 following a funding crisis in 2008. The Board includes George Osborne who is Chancellor of the Exchequer in the conservative UK government.

The IBC preliminary report is extremely critical of the UK banking industry and it recommends some very serious reforms that are much stronger than those recommended by the US commission. They include breaking up the large banks that do investment banking and retail banking along with higher taxes on banker compensation.

The Demos pamphlet attempts to show that the combination of investment banking with retail banking was not a cause of the banking crisis and that the imposition of higher taxes would cause banks to move to countries with lower tax rates. It also criticizes the suggestion that the share of UK GDP, due to the banking industry, should be reduced in order to lower its dependence on the banking industry.

The IBC report goes much further than the US commission in its reform recommendations. Large banks in the UK, particularly Barclays, do not like it and large US banks will not like the implications as well.