From the beginning, there is one embarrassing and evident fact that Professor White has to cope with: that "free" Scottish banks suspended specie payment when England did, in 1797, and, like England, maintained that suspension until 1821. Free banks are not supposed to be able to, or…
Recently, the UK Daily Telegraph ran a remarkable Op-Ed written by William Hague, the just-retired Conservative politician and former UK Foreign Secretary. The title alone was startling: “Central bankers have collectively lost the plot. They must raise interest rates or face their doom.” Now I confess that…
Writing for FT.com’s “The Exchange” blog, economists Diane Coyle and Jonathan Haskel suggest that Britain’s regulators — namely, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Bank of England — have got it wrong on competition in banking. The authors argue that “the CMA and the BoE” have overlooked “the…
On December 1, 2015, the Bank of England released the results of its second round of annual stress tests, which aim to measure the capital adequacy of the UK banking system. This exercise is intended to function as a financial health check for the major UK banks,…
Anyone who follows the stress tests conducted by the Fed and various European banking authorities can’t help poking fun at them. After all, it’s hard to repress a chuckle when, time and again, a bank passes one of these tests with flying colors only to end up…