Larry Elliott in the Guardian writes that
Every parent with a stroppy teenager knows the feeling. After relentless pressure, mum or dad gives in to demands that they drop the oppressive rules that govern the home and, with reluctance, allow their progeny to do their own thing. The last words the teenager hears as they slam the door and head off for a life of freedom is: “Be it on your own head. Don’t come running to me when it ends in tears.”
But, inevitably, when it does end in tears, mum or dad can’t really bring themselves to make good on their threat. The blubbing teenager is welcomed back into the fold with a warm embrace and insists it won’t happen again.
That, in brief, is the relationship between the world’s commercial banks and those regulating them. Having behaved like wild ones, the banks now want their parents - the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank in the first instance, but ultimately the taxpayer - to bail them out. They want cheap money, they want anonymity to make sure their previous stupidity is not revealed, and they want lower interest rates so that the public will be encouraged to borrow again.
He also cites Mises and Hayek.
