Are banks better controlled now?

I can't see that any significant changes have been made apart from 'new powers' to the FSA, well they failed dismally to spot any wrongdoings over the past few years so why should we expect that they would improve any more than the banks have?

It beggars belief that they create such a horrendous worldwide financial crisis, beg for public money to keep themselves afloat then put thousands of companies out of business by refusing to lend them any of OUR money, claiming they are being 'responsible'.

Sorry but if it had been up to me, I'd have let them go under and spent OUR money ensuring the damage was limited.

Me neither. I don't see any changes at all although Tony posted earlier today about savings being more secure due to a change. I will have to go back and have another look. It all seems the same to me however, the majority of us are all a bit poorer with a slightly bleaker outlook!

It's amazing, the banks got us in this mess, now all you hear is stories of them charging more for their products because of it.

I feel for any business that have traded successfully for many, many years but are now going to the wall because their bank are suddenly withdrawing a long-held overdraft facility or charging the earth for a loan.

Shame on them, and shame on the government for hollowly trying to claim it's not happening.

It certainly seems unjust that the public have bailed out the banks and now it is reported that the lending is slow at best. Add to this that the interest rates being offered are much increased based upon the base rate it does make you wonder how supportive they are being of 'us' after we supported them.

If the heads of the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve (well, ex head, since I'm talking about Greenspan) are to be believed, they didn't realise this could happen. They thought the huge derivates bubble was isolated from the real financial system, or so they say.

So either they are pretty incompetent, or not telling the truth about how much they knew and when they knew it. This doesn't fill me with great faith that this will be prevented from happening again, or even that the people 'in charge' understood what went wrong.