Kate Muir in her review of the new Gordon Gekko movies said (and this is probably more paraphrase than quote as the Saturday Times is alareadyrecycled) "it's a great movie with a few flaws, but like the banks who crashed its too big to fail"
Great line Kate!
Why are the banks so resistant to being forced to break up a bit and not be too big to fail?
The romance about the Pre Nuptual Agreement is:
"We are so in love and so committed to each other that we will never split up"
The reality is of course that because we each and all take marriage so frivolously that something like 50% end in divorce.
The 70 year old millionaire would be wise to have a pre nup before he marries the 22 year old page three model.
And a country in debt because it has spent a gazillion dollars bailing out banks who were too big to fail would be wise to have some insurance too.
Any argument against the concept that the banks could make basically starts:
"Of course we don't intend to do anything madly risky again, and have no intention of failing, but..."
I cannot imagne that when banks look at London and say - if the government does blah blah we will leave - that anyone takes them seriously.
Any country desperate enough to have that contingent liability is NOT a country I would want to live in, and certainly not a country any South Kensington resident banker would want their Lithuanian nanny to bring their offspring up in.
[An aside to Andy, aka Bozo's Antagonist - Of course Yorkshire would be better! But the only way you would know that is having been there - something not many bankers have done, the M25 being seen as a defensive trench system by most South Ken residents]
I will hear any reasonable argument for banks being BIG. Of course I can see that most society- and world- changing initiatives came from SMALL companies. But I can see that if you dont have many strategies for growth - aside from taking massive risks, a continuing squeeze on your suppliers and charging your customers 18% for the money you get from the tax payers (i.e your customers) at 0.5% - that being big helps.
So i can hear arguments for BIG
BUT why do you need to be too big to fail?
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