UK banks are continuing their offensive against tighter regulation, backed as ever by a thinly-veiled threat of upping sticks and moving elsewhere if the authorities don't ease up. HSBC's CEO Stuart Gulliver has been moaning in the Telegraph this weekend that regulations have reduced the market capitalisation of his bank by about £18 billion, currently equivalent to about US$ 28 billion.
We'll pass the hat shortly for Mr Gulliver, who was paid £8 million for his trouble last year, but maybe first we should check to see how much the financial crisis cost the UK economy. According to the ONS website, GDP at market prices fell by £57 billion between 2008 and 2009. In real terms, GDP is still 3.5% below its all-time peak, a level it is unlikely to recover until 2014 at the earliest. By that time, the accumulated total of "lost" national income will be in the hundreds of billions of pounds.
In the circumstances, maybe Mr Gulliver can try to understand why the government might see the added regulation that has supposedly cut the market valuation of HSBC and its rivals as worthwhile insurance against a repeat -- and why both politicians and the public think it's only fair for the banks to pay the premiums.
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