Productive vs Unproductive Lending

Interesting comment by Bob Prechter about US Banks growing lending to consumers at the expense of lending to business.

Legality of Windfall taxes doubtful

We all wonder about the absurdity of some claims about discrimination, unfair treatment etc but one thing appears to be clear: the practice of putting windfall taxes on certain individuals just because they earn their living in a certain industry will no longer be meekly accepted now that deference to authority is no longer existent. We will watch with interest how the courts deal with law suits brought against discriminatory taxes on incomes earned by workers in the banking (and related?) industries. The Pre-Budget speech by Alistair Darling is certainly good news for one section of the UK population: the lawyers!

PS: Tax on bankers' bonus 'would infringe human rights' (The Times) You read it here first!

BayernLB: State-owned Banks no solution

The sorry state of Bayern LB demonstrates that public ownership of banks is no solution to the problem posed by banking supervision. While a large part of the BLB's losses are due to the sub-prime credits generated in the US a not insignificant part is due to mistakes made by management - in particular the ill-fated acquisition of Hypo-Alpe-Adria just at the beginning of the Credit Crunch in Spring 2007.