“The destruction of the British building society movement – or much of it – in the two decades after the late 1980s … was one of the great acts of economic vandalism in modern times. And the commercial banks largely abandoned locally based relationship banking in the decade before the recent financial crisis. There is now no institutional structure in place to offer countercyclical lending, particularly small and medium sized businesses, in place of the banks.”

—  Vince Cable

Comments on demutualisation of Building Societies http://www.libdemvoice.org/vince-cable-centre-forum-speec-29033.html, 18 June 2012.
2012

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The destruction of the British building society movement – or much of it – in the two decades after the late 1980s … wa…" by Vince Cable?
Vince Cable photo
Vince Cable 16
British Liberal Democrat politician 1943

Related quotes

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks — when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur… I shiver at the thought.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), pp. 225-226

Richard Durbin photo

“The banks—hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis—that many of the banks created—are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

Richard Durbin (1944) U.S. senior senator from Illinois

Interview by Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal, PBS, May 8, 2009. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05082009/transcript1.html

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo

“Financial Services is one of just four exclusive committees in the House. It oversees big banks, lending, & the financial sector….”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1085380063112105984 (15 January 2019)
Twitter Quotes (2019), January 2019

Robert Frost photo

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet
Chandra Shekhar photo

“He was strongly opposed to getting loans from international financial institutions but the crisis during his time left the country with no choice but to fully embrace World Bank and IMF and the liberalisation policies.”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

PM Chandrashekhar - A firebrand idealist

“I find odd the view that a Government institution is better placed to evaluate "the technical and financial viability" of a project than a commercial bank. It may well be that our banks are deficient in the kind of expertize required for assessing projects but then what we should be doing is encouraging banks to acquire such expertize or to make use of outside, commercial, expertize. I do not believe in any case that a Government machine can provide a reliable judgement on such matters, an opinion the banking members of the committee appear to have shared, for they have prudently refused to commit themselves to accepting its advice. I myself tend to mistrust the judgement of anyone not involved in the actual process of risktaking.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

October 9, 1970, page 117.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Excessive acreages of unused buildings, commercial and residential were created. The need for such construction, given the space demands of modern business bureaucracy, was believed to be without limit. In later consequence, the solvency of numerous banks, including that of some of the nation's largest and most prestigious institutions, was either fatally impaired or placed in doubt. The lending of both those that failed or were endangered and others was subject, by fear and example to curtailment. The construction industry was severely constrained and its workers left unemployed. A general recession ensued. Any early warning as to what was happening would have been exceptionally ill received, seen as yet another invasion of the benign rule of laissez faire and a specific interference with the market. However in keeping with the exceptions to this rule, there would be eventual salvation in a government bailout of the banks. Insurance of bank deposits — a far from slight contribution to contentment — was permissible, as well as assurance that were a bank large enough, it would not be allowed to fail. A preventive role by government was not allowed; eventual government rescue was highly acceptable.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Culture of Contentment

Source: The Culture of Contentment (1992), Ch. 5

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo

“I would suggest that we use 5% of the bailout money to endow the Banks of England, which would be established in the counties and cities of England and would be constrained to lend within the county or city. The principal of the endowment would be in trust to the people of that county or city, in perpetuity so that it could not be liquidated by its members, and the balance of power in its corporate governance will be held by a third being held by the Bank of England, a third by its workforce and a third by the civic institutions of the locality. These newly constituted ‘Banks of England’ are one of the essential feature of Blue Labour statecraft built upon endowment and institution building.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, An Ancient Polity For A New Economy? http://www.bluelabour.org/2012/06/19/an-ancient-polity-for-a-new-economy/

“I think people are very tired and angry of what happened with our banks in Scotland and I think this creates an opportunity in the future to build a new bank which is based on mutual principles. It's not going to be speculating in all kinds of strange derivatives and it's not going to be a bank that's going to be focused overseas, it will be a bank that's focused in Scotland - and really it's a peoples' bank.”

Brian Souter (1954) British businessman

As quoted on the BBC Web Site http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-11106098 (27th August 2010)

Related topics