Jim O'Neill is the former Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs and Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He invented the "Bric" acronym to describe the developing economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China—that emerged as drivers of global growth in the aftermath of the Credit Crunch. He is currently presenting a series of BBC programmes about the countries he thinks will next come to prominence in the global economy and his latest book, The Bric Road to Growth, is part of the Perspectives series, published by the London Publishing Partnership.
Prospector: So Larry Summers and secular stagnation, it’s an enticing phrase. He seems to be very good at formulating these kinds of ideas. What do you make of it?
Jim O'Neill: He is very enticing. I was at a conference that was held at the London School of Econimics one afternoon in honour of Mervyn King’s retirement, and Larry was on a panel with some other luminaries. Larry’s discourse seemed so much above everybody else’s. So it’s so easy to think “wow”. He’s got a hell of a brain.
That said, I think it’s a bit of demand-side-ish. And, particularly given aspects of things that have influenced my brain for the past decade, I think it’s quite narrow minded because it doesn’t give much thought to supply-side issues. I am saying that having just seen the latest trade data in the US which shows the lowest trade deficit since 2009. And if the world is evolving vaguely in the way I see it—with all these new countries becoming more and more important, a competitive US is in a much better position to adjust to a new, different US than the one pre 2007/08 that many people, including Larry, seem to think.
Have other experts suggested similar ideas?
If you look at bog-standard economic cyclical analysis it is true that the US recovery—as currently fashionable as it seems to be—that it’s better than elsewhere in the G7, is limited by the standards of past post-crisis recoveries. But what a lot of people, Larry included, don’t seem to be paying much attention to, the US is coming out of it very differently than the US that went into it. And in particular trade deficit like that, it’s consistent with a current account balance being not much more than 2 per cent deficit of GDP, compared to 6.5 per cent before the crisis. So the US is adapting and adjusting to being in a different kind of competitive place than it was before.
Do you think that the US economy is adapting in a way that is significant in the long term?
I do. I was brought up in my early days in the financial industry—including relatively early in my career living in New York—on the basis that whatever happened, US imports were always going to be twice US exports and, linked to that, whenever the US created domestic demand the one guarantee is that the US would start importing signficantly.
It’s not true anymore. After years of a very competitive currency and probably aided by this remarkable thing going on with shale gas the US is showing signs of being a bit different than before. I remember having a big ding-dong with Martin Wolf about this at an event the year before last. There were already signs of this then but he still gave the standard answer “That’s just because the US is not showing any domestic demand recovery”. He pointed to historical evidence to make the case that it was only temporary and once they start showing demand it’ll widen.
Guess what? The US just had the lowest deficit in four years. I think that’s quite important and it suggests to me that, despite facing other challenges, the US could surprise on the upside if they’re not tightening fiscal policy so much anymore.
There are two consensuses out there at the same time, which sounds like a contradiction. One is that the US is stuck in this Summers-esque type dilemma, but there’s another one saying that this year the US might grow more than three per cent. And I think I subscribe to the latter.
You don’t think that that’s going to be constrained by the beginning of tapering?
If I’m right about the changes in trading patterns, then no. Because it’s dependent on demand from the rest of the world.
What about the threat of rising interest rates, with all of the cooling effects that would conventionally bring?
Some parts of domestic demand, such as housing recovery, would obviously be sensitive to that. I think that’s one of the reasons why the Fed is eager to be cautious about it. I went to an entertaining dinner in November with a bunch of hedge fund people including some of the old Goldman and prop [proprietary trading desk] guys. And the whole damned dinner was about tapering, and I was teasing them saying “God this is so boring listening to you guys.” But they said: “Well, what do you think about it?” And I said: “Nothing”. But then I said: “When the Fed tapers it’ll be as dovish atepering as you can get, because they don’t want financial conditions to tighten.”
Why would they be so worried, all the prop trading guys?
Because of the narrow world in which they live, they’re worried about where’s the next easy two per cent profit and loss coming from. I think more materially they’re worried about that any recovery that’s taken place in the developed world is purely because of rates being so low, and once they start to go up it’s all over. So we might still be in this Great Depression, and if rates were to normalise that would quickly come clear. But partly for that risk, the Fed’s not going to be in a hurry to do it unless there’s a big surprise in inflation I would think.
You seem pretty bullish on the US. What about us here in the UK?
It was quite clear to me that the UK would surprise people by bouncing at some point, which we are doing. And now it’s becoming very fashionable to say that the UK is going to be the strongest economy in Europe. Well what kind of achievement’s that? It’s like being top of the Premier League these days. Having talked as much as I have about this change in the US external position, we’re not getting that here. There are some valid concerns about the sustainability and split of the recovery over here, and while there are one or two anecdotes suggesting that exports and investments might accelerate, it's really important that this growth materialises.
When you say “split” in the UK recovery, what do you mean by that?
That it's seemingly led primarily by the consumer. And given the mess that was created because of the bursting of the financial bubble, the consumer was particularly troubled by it, and so to just create further indebtedness of the consumer does make us really vulnerable to a period when interest rates start to rise again. To have a more sustainable recovery, we need to have an improving trade balance, improving exports, improving investment, and so on. Which the US is showing signs of. I don’t exclude the possibility that the ONS’s data is so bad that actually there might be more improvements going on in those areas than the data currently reports, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
So you think people are borrowing too much—mortgage debt and so on?
Yes. And if you look at the mortgage debt that’s going on, and the evidence of house prices accelerating.
What do you make of that? I ask as there seems to be a sharp division between people who think that there’s a bubble and people who think that there is not. Spokesmen from the Treasury and No. 10, have said to me: “Housing prices are three per cent lower than they were before we went into the crisis”. To which I reply: “Are you saying that they are at 97 per cent of their price that they achieved before the biggest asset price bubble in the last century?” That doesn’t get a response! What do you think?
Well, there are two angles to this. First of all, I’m more interested in it than I normally would be because I’m chairing this independent commission called the Cities Growth Commission which the RSA is behind. So it’s all about getting more growth outside—not at London’s expense I quickly add— but outside of the capital. And so what’s going on with house prices is obviously a fascinating part of that.
Secondly, I think it’s quite difficult unless you really delve into pulling the data apart to know what is the equilibrium level: ie you have to adjust the national average for taking London out. And I would argue that pricey London, whatever that area includes—I can think of the five boroughs that are obviously at the core of it, but it might be extending. You might want to price them on a world basis rather than a UK basis. You look at the sorts of house property ownership of Knightsbridge, Westminster, Kensington, it’s primarily at the margin being driven by (if not significantly at the margin) by non-residents [international buyers].
So measuring those prices compared to UK average income doesn’t make any sense, and you’ve got to adjust the data for that, which is part of what we’re looking into with the commission. Now my hunch is that, even once you’ve done that, house prices are not that cheap outside of London compared to the national income average. But it’s also relevant, which is why I said the first point. I find myself thinking that it ties in with how bold we want to be with some of our national infrastructure. When I first heard about it I was amongst those that thought HS2 was a waste of time and money. But I do find myself thinking that, if it does what it says on the tin and cuts down on the journey time, particularly between all these northern cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. It’s almost like creating an extended tube system. It's conceivable that it could make more people think: “I don’t have to struggle like crazy on the edge of London. I can go and live somewhere nice in a much bigger place and happily work in London”. That has to be taken into account about house prices going forward. But away from those things, with those two big caveats, for our recovery to depend on house prices rising a lot is not good.
And could you envisage a situation where there could be a sudden slump in house prices?
I think without a rapid tightening of household financial conditions, which would primarily be a big rise in mortgage yields, I can’t really see why. But of course it’s not impossible. You know, when you look back knowing what happened to the financial system, you would have thought here’s something to go back to the person that tells you three per cent down. Most people would have thought house prices would have dropped 20 per cent on the back of that, and they haven’t. And the reason why they probably haven’t is that it’s so easy to get a mortgage. It’s so cheap. But you take our interest rates back to some kind of vague normal historical level from here, particularly if it were quick, that’d be pretty unpleasant for the housing market, I would have thought.
Is that likely?
I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s possible. Particularly if we don’t make progress on changing our trade and external position. You look at the very latest data, which I think is extremely doubtful, but if you take it at face value, current account deficit is 5 per cent of GDP. That can’t go on forever.
So it seems that you feel that whereas the recovery in the US feels more solid, the one here is on slightly less reliable ground.
A little bit, and I’d like to emphasise the caveat that the credibility of the data is very, very iffy in my opinion.
The ONS’s data?
Yes. They get really annoyed with me, I said this at a 200--senior-civil-servant leadership conference, and the guy that was responsible for it was sitting there. He was particularly sensitive about me saying this, but it doesn’t all hang together. How can it be that our investment is always so weak? And especially now that the confidence seems to have risen so much, it doesn’t seem to really make a lot of sense.
It might well be that there’s still a hypothesis. And it’s interesting that the Bank of England’s just opined about this recently—so it’s not just some idiot Jim O’Neil saying it, it’s all these boffins at the Bank. They might be really good at measuring car factories, and investment in car factories, but investment in things related to universities expanding, into biomedical research, you know—the whole new world. I have quite a hunch that for some reason the data guys aren’t picking that up very well.
And the data shows business investment in Britain as low.
The data shows it to be persistently weak. You can see why it weakened a lot because of the crisis and to some extent because of the euro crisis too. But not as much as people talk about. Especially now that we’ve had about nine months of accelerating confidence. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
So with that caveat, it might well be that the UK recovery is more robust than the ONS is reporting, and better balanced. But if we don’t see evidence of it this year then it’ll be pretty troubling, I think.
So, if I were to ask whether you think Osborne had been proved right, what would you say to that?
I think that’s very questionable. He’s currently being proved lucky but I don’t think he’s been proved right in the slightest, no.
Do you think that the global banking system, is really any different now to how it was pre-crisis?
I’d say three things about this. First of all, and this is having been in the industry as long as I was, banks are full of human beings just like any other organisation. Despite that, they have this unique role of being at the centre of trying to shift savings from where there aren’t any to some place where there are, in what is seemingly the most profitable way they can. And that’s all they are. Their excesses, or lack of, depend on the effectiveness of financial regulation. That’s my first point.
Secondly, there are things that we can learn from some emerging countries, and especially China, who think of their banks a bit differently. It was so fashionable here and to some degree in the US to have this light touch regulation—the banks are full of these dead smart people, just let them self-regulate. That’s why we ended up with the scale of the problem we had because, going back to my first point, if banks are nothing other than just shifting money from one place to another—and they’ll do it in what’s seemingly the best way to make money—the regulatory environment encourages them to get away with whatever they want to get away with. That’s what happens.
And so my next point would be, that there’s been a huge shift in the stance of regulatory policy since 2009, some of it very myopic and too narrow-minded. But I think that the way banks are being forced to behave now is very different. Some of it good, some of it bad. The FT recently ran a piece quoting McKinsey’s evidence that there’s been a 70 per cent drop from the peak of cross-border financial capital flows, and most of it probably relating to banks doing so much less cross-border stuff. Which is, on the one hand justified given that before they were doing far too much without much lasting economic gain.
But I think, particularly in the US, there is evidence of banks behaving differently. One thing I always love to try and emphasise is that, here in the UK it seems that people still can’t distinguish between British banks and the City. Of course the City includes what British banks do, but they’re not the same thing. And for the City, on the one hand very understandably considering the scale of the crisis, to be so regarded as this horrible thing is sad. And going back to the balance of payments challenge, for the last 30 years the UK’s so-called invisible surplus has been about two per cent of GDP. And the role of the City, and the earnings it brings to the UK, irrelevant of what nationality the banks are, I mean Goldman Sachs is a really good example, 6,000 people work there, hardly any of which have got anything to do with domestic UK business or for that matter are British. Seventy per cent of that invisible surplus is probably because of the City. So to do things to try and stop that is just very narrow minded. I understand the human aspects to it, and the eye-catching politics of it, but it’s just ludicrous.
Do you think the City’s ever going to win back its reputation?
I hope so. If you look at what stands out as being unique about the UK in a global context, both today and potentially going forward, it’s the broader services world that links greatly to the City at the heart of it. And not just banking, but insurance, legal, architectural. I often joke that it’d be a terrible thing if New York ever changed its time zone by five hours. That’d be a nightmare because there would be no need for a lot of that to be here. But we are in the centre of the world’s time zone and everyone wants to conduct business in English. And we have this very flexible pool of what you might broadly call labour that’s devoted to this.
Of course it requires people in the City to demonstrate better leadership to help rebuild the belief in it, but it’s a struggle for them with political figures seizing any opportunity to bash them. British banks shouldn’t have done been allowed to do what they did, in terms of the size of their balance sheets. But for that to be regarded as therefore we should just stop the City being the City is just silly.
Prospector: So Larry Summers and secular stagnation, it’s an enticing phrase. He seems to be very good at formulating these kinds of ideas. What do you make of it?
Jim O'Neill: He is very enticing. I was at a conference that was held at the London School of Econimics one afternoon in honour of Mervyn King’s retirement, and Larry was on a panel with some other luminaries. Larry’s discourse seemed so much above everybody else’s. So it’s so easy to think “wow”. He’s got a hell of a brain.
That said, I think it’s a bit of demand-side-ish. And, particularly given aspects of things that have influenced my brain for the past decade, I think it’s quite narrow minded because it doesn’t give much thought to supply-side issues. I am saying that having just seen the latest trade data in the US which shows the lowest trade deficit since 2009. And if the world is evolving vaguely in the way I see it—with all these new countries becoming more and more important, a competitive US is in a much better position to adjust to a new, different US than the one pre 2007/08 that many people, including Larry, seem to think.
Have other experts suggested similar ideas?
If you look at bog-standard economic cyclical analysis it is true that the US recovery—as currently fashionable as it seems to be—that it’s better than elsewhere in the G7, is limited by the standards of past post-crisis recoveries. But what a lot of people, Larry included, don’t seem to be paying much attention to, the US is coming out of it very differently than the US that went into it. And in particular trade deficit like that, it’s consistent with a current account balance being not much more than 2 per cent deficit of GDP, compared to 6.5 per cent before the crisis. So the US is adapting and adjusting to being in a different kind of competitive place than it was before.
Do you think that the US economy is adapting in a way that is significant in the long term?
I do. I was brought up in my early days in the financial industry—including relatively early in my career living in New York—on the basis that whatever happened, US imports were always going to be twice US exports and, linked to that, whenever the US created domestic demand the one guarantee is that the US would start importing signficantly.
It’s not true anymore. After years of a very competitive currency and probably aided by this remarkable thing going on with shale gas the US is showing signs of being a bit different than before. I remember having a big ding-dong with Martin Wolf about this at an event the year before last. There were already signs of this then but he still gave the standard answer “That’s just because the US is not showing any domestic demand recovery”. He pointed to historical evidence to make the case that it was only temporary and once they start showing demand it’ll widen.
Guess what? The US just had the lowest deficit in four years. I think that’s quite important and it suggests to me that, despite facing other challenges, the US could surprise on the upside if they’re not tightening fiscal policy so much anymore.
There are two consensuses out there at the same time, which sounds like a contradiction. One is that the US is stuck in this Summers-esque type dilemma, but there’s another one saying that this year the US might grow more than three per cent. And I think I subscribe to the latter.
You don’t think that that’s going to be constrained by the beginning of tapering?
If I’m right about the changes in trading patterns, then no. Because it’s dependent on demand from the rest of the world.
What about the threat of rising interest rates, with all of the cooling effects that would conventionally bring?
Some parts of domestic demand, such as housing recovery, would obviously be sensitive to that. I think that’s one of the reasons why the Fed is eager to be cautious about it. I went to an entertaining dinner in November with a bunch of hedge fund people including some of the old Goldman and prop [proprietary trading desk] guys. And the whole damned dinner was about tapering, and I was teasing them saying “God this is so boring listening to you guys.” But they said: “Well, what do you think about it?” And I said: “Nothing”. But then I said: “When the Fed tapers it’ll be as dovish atepering as you can get, because they don’t want financial conditions to tighten.”
Why would they be so worried, all the prop trading guys?
Because of the narrow world in which they live, they’re worried about where’s the next easy two per cent profit and loss coming from. I think more materially they’re worried about that any recovery that’s taken place in the developed world is purely because of rates being so low, and once they start to go up it’s all over. So we might still be in this Great Depression, and if rates were to normalise that would quickly come clear. But partly for that risk, the Fed’s not going to be in a hurry to do it unless there’s a big surprise in inflation I would think.
You seem pretty bullish on the US. What about us here in the UK?
It was quite clear to me that the UK would surprise people by bouncing at some point, which we are doing. And now it’s becoming very fashionable to say that the UK is going to be the strongest economy in Europe. Well what kind of achievement’s that? It’s like being top of the Premier League these days. Having talked as much as I have about this change in the US external position, we’re not getting that here. There are some valid concerns about the sustainability and split of the recovery over here, and while there are one or two anecdotes suggesting that exports and investments might accelerate, it's really important that this growth materialises.
When you say “split” in the UK recovery, what do you mean by that?
That it's seemingly led primarily by the consumer. And given the mess that was created because of the bursting of the financial bubble, the consumer was particularly troubled by it, and so to just create further indebtedness of the consumer does make us really vulnerable to a period when interest rates start to rise again. To have a more sustainable recovery, we need to have an improving trade balance, improving exports, improving investment, and so on. Which the US is showing signs of. I don’t exclude the possibility that the ONS’s data is so bad that actually there might be more improvements going on in those areas than the data currently reports, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
So you think people are borrowing too much—mortgage debt and so on?
Yes. And if you look at the mortgage debt that’s going on, and the evidence of house prices accelerating.
What do you make of that? I ask as there seems to be a sharp division between people who think that there’s a bubble and people who think that there is not. Spokesmen from the Treasury and No. 10, have said to me: “Housing prices are three per cent lower than they were before we went into the crisis”. To which I reply: “Are you saying that they are at 97 per cent of their price that they achieved before the biggest asset price bubble in the last century?” That doesn’t get a response! What do you think?
Well, there are two angles to this. First of all, I’m more interested in it than I normally would be because I’m chairing this independent commission called the Cities Growth Commission which the RSA is behind. So it’s all about getting more growth outside—not at London’s expense I quickly add— but outside of the capital. And so what’s going on with house prices is obviously a fascinating part of that.
Secondly, I think it’s quite difficult unless you really delve into pulling the data apart to know what is the equilibrium level: ie you have to adjust the national average for taking London out. And I would argue that pricey London, whatever that area includes—I can think of the five boroughs that are obviously at the core of it, but it might be extending. You might want to price them on a world basis rather than a UK basis. You look at the sorts of house property ownership of Knightsbridge, Westminster, Kensington, it’s primarily at the margin being driven by (if not significantly at the margin) by non-residents [international buyers].
So measuring those prices compared to UK average income doesn’t make any sense, and you’ve got to adjust the data for that, which is part of what we’re looking into with the commission. Now my hunch is that, even once you’ve done that, house prices are not that cheap outside of London compared to the national income average. But it’s also relevant, which is why I said the first point. I find myself thinking that it ties in with how bold we want to be with some of our national infrastructure. When I first heard about it I was amongst those that thought HS2 was a waste of time and money. But I do find myself thinking that, if it does what it says on the tin and cuts down on the journey time, particularly between all these northern cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. It’s almost like creating an extended tube system. It's conceivable that it could make more people think: “I don’t have to struggle like crazy on the edge of London. I can go and live somewhere nice in a much bigger place and happily work in London”. That has to be taken into account about house prices going forward. But away from those things, with those two big caveats, for our recovery to depend on house prices rising a lot is not good.
And could you envisage a situation where there could be a sudden slump in house prices?
I think without a rapid tightening of household financial conditions, which would primarily be a big rise in mortgage yields, I can’t really see why. But of course it’s not impossible. You know, when you look back knowing what happened to the financial system, you would have thought here’s something to go back to the person that tells you three per cent down. Most people would have thought house prices would have dropped 20 per cent on the back of that, and they haven’t. And the reason why they probably haven’t is that it’s so easy to get a mortgage. It’s so cheap. But you take our interest rates back to some kind of vague normal historical level from here, particularly if it were quick, that’d be pretty unpleasant for the housing market, I would have thought.
Is that likely?
I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s possible. Particularly if we don’t make progress on changing our trade and external position. You look at the very latest data, which I think is extremely doubtful, but if you take it at face value, current account deficit is 5 per cent of GDP. That can’t go on forever.
So it seems that you feel that whereas the recovery in the US feels more solid, the one here is on slightly less reliable ground.
A little bit, and I’d like to emphasise the caveat that the credibility of the data is very, very iffy in my opinion.
The ONS’s data?
Yes. They get really annoyed with me, I said this at a 200--senior-civil-servant leadership conference, and the guy that was responsible for it was sitting there. He was particularly sensitive about me saying this, but it doesn’t all hang together. How can it be that our investment is always so weak? And especially now that the confidence seems to have risen so much, it doesn’t seem to really make a lot of sense.
It might well be that there’s still a hypothesis. And it’s interesting that the Bank of England’s just opined about this recently—so it’s not just some idiot Jim O’Neil saying it, it’s all these boffins at the Bank. They might be really good at measuring car factories, and investment in car factories, but investment in things related to universities expanding, into biomedical research, you know—the whole new world. I have quite a hunch that for some reason the data guys aren’t picking that up very well.
And the data shows business investment in Britain as low.
The data shows it to be persistently weak. You can see why it weakened a lot because of the crisis and to some extent because of the euro crisis too. But not as much as people talk about. Especially now that we’ve had about nine months of accelerating confidence. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
So with that caveat, it might well be that the UK recovery is more robust than the ONS is reporting, and better balanced. But if we don’t see evidence of it this year then it’ll be pretty troubling, I think.
So, if I were to ask whether you think Osborne had been proved right, what would you say to that?
I think that’s very questionable. He’s currently being proved lucky but I don’t think he’s been proved right in the slightest, no.
Do you think that the global banking system, is really any different now to how it was pre-crisis?
I’d say three things about this. First of all, and this is having been in the industry as long as I was, banks are full of human beings just like any other organisation. Despite that, they have this unique role of being at the centre of trying to shift savings from where there aren’t any to some place where there are, in what is seemingly the most profitable way they can. And that’s all they are. Their excesses, or lack of, depend on the effectiveness of financial regulation. That’s my first point.
Secondly, there are things that we can learn from some emerging countries, and especially China, who think of their banks a bit differently. It was so fashionable here and to some degree in the US to have this light touch regulation—the banks are full of these dead smart people, just let them self-regulate. That’s why we ended up with the scale of the problem we had because, going back to my first point, if banks are nothing other than just shifting money from one place to another—and they’ll do it in what’s seemingly the best way to make money—the regulatory environment encourages them to get away with whatever they want to get away with. That’s what happens.
And so my next point would be, that there’s been a huge shift in the stance of regulatory policy since 2009, some of it very myopic and too narrow-minded. But I think that the way banks are being forced to behave now is very different. Some of it good, some of it bad. The FT recently ran a piece quoting McKinsey’s evidence that there’s been a 70 per cent drop from the peak of cross-border financial capital flows, and most of it probably relating to banks doing so much less cross-border stuff. Which is, on the one hand justified given that before they were doing far too much without much lasting economic gain.
But I think, particularly in the US, there is evidence of banks behaving differently. One thing I always love to try and emphasise is that, here in the UK it seems that people still can’t distinguish between British banks and the City. Of course the City includes what British banks do, but they’re not the same thing. And for the City, on the one hand very understandably considering the scale of the crisis, to be so regarded as this horrible thing is sad. And going back to the balance of payments challenge, for the last 30 years the UK’s so-called invisible surplus has been about two per cent of GDP. And the role of the City, and the earnings it brings to the UK, irrelevant of what nationality the banks are, I mean Goldman Sachs is a really good example, 6,000 people work there, hardly any of which have got anything to do with domestic UK business or for that matter are British. Seventy per cent of that invisible surplus is probably because of the City. So to do things to try and stop that is just very narrow minded. I understand the human aspects to it, and the eye-catching politics of it, but it’s just ludicrous.
Do you think the City’s ever going to win back its reputation?
I hope so. If you look at what stands out as being unique about the UK in a global context, both today and potentially going forward, it’s the broader services world that links greatly to the City at the heart of it. And not just banking, but insurance, legal, architectural. I often joke that it’d be a terrible thing if New York ever changed its time zone by five hours. That’d be a nightmare because there would be no need for a lot of that to be here. But we are in the centre of the world’s time zone and everyone wants to conduct business in English. And we have this very flexible pool of what you might broadly call labour that’s devoted to this.
Of course it requires people in the City to demonstrate better leadership to help rebuild the belief in it, but it’s a struggle for them with political figures seizing any opportunity to bash them. British banks shouldn’t have done been allowed to do what they did, in terms of the size of their balance sheets. But for that to be regarded as therefore we should just stop the City being the City is just silly.
