Would You Buy A Secondhand Car From A Banker?

We all know that politicians dissemble if not downright lie, like Blair and his spin doctor Alistair Campbell about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. We do not think though that institutions like banks will  behave in other than an exemplary fashion since banks in particular have always exuded this rather pompous, superior, stodgy and forbidding aura. This feeling about them has been engendered by their attitude that you are lucky to have been accepted as a customer and perhaps confirmed by their giving the impression that they are meticulous about how you, their customer, behaves towards them. For example if you go over your overdraft limit by a penny they will immediately come down on you like a ton of bricks and insist you transfer the penny straightaway from a deposit account or anyway made good or else. With the way the banks have behaved there has been a complete sea change in our view of them. They can now be seen as a bunch of shysters who have no more claim to be a pillar of anything and indeed are as bad as any politician. They take our money, misuse it, lose it and charge us for doing so, for the great service they pretend they give us. No bank should be allowed to be too big to fail and our banking system should perhaps be changed to the same system they have in Canada and Australia. Their system seems to have saved them from the banking crisis everyone else in the world is experiencing. Matt Ridley has a great post on his blog about banks here. His suggestions or rather those of Douglas Carswell MP need to be seriously evaluated by the Chancellor whilst he also considers the merits of the Canadian and Australian banking systems.