Sunday 2 August 2009

Useless FSA has to go to banks for loans?

You could not make this up. The Financial Services Authority has had to go to the banks to borrow money. The FSA has been absolutely useless since it was set up, being unable to control the banks, now it has failed to control it's own finances. To be fair the FSA did spot what was going wrong with the banking industry - it wrote many reports into bad practice and outright fraud - however it lacked the teeth to do anything about it and the government just ignored their reports.

From the Independent:
The Financial Services Authority has gone into debt for the first time and has been told by directors to review its cash flow. The regulator has drawn on a £100m credit agreement with Lloyds Banking Group and has concluded a further borrowing facility of £100m with HSBC.

The FSA spent £347m in the past year, but raised only £324m from fees and other revenues. Although the first facility was agreed with Lloyds before the credit crunch, it remained unused until this year. However, the regulator has already had to sign a further agreement to finance its expected deficit for the current year.
Full story HERE.

2 comments:

Sean Lynch said...

It will be scrapped Steve, immediatly after the next election,
as one of the first actions of the new Conservative administration and the regulatory powers given back to the Bank of England.
I don't think Merv and Gordon speak any more, not since he criticised Gordon Brown's reckless borrowing and the ever increasing burden of debt.
Brown now hides behind Mandleson and the Labour party hide behind them, they know they have lost the General Election and their time is running out.
The remainder of this year will elapse very quickly, then we are looking in the new year towards the Spring and the election that will get rid of Labour for some considerable time...

Anonymous said...

I've also heard that Gordon Brown's useless FSA is being abolished by the tories. They need to go one further and do something about the draconian devil that is HMRC!