The Bad Idea Bears: They have struck.

I was thinking about commenting on this yesterday, when I heard about it on the radio. But, as I was leaving the house at the time, I decided agin’ it; surely no-one’s seriously considering this, right?

No-one’s seriously considering putting off fixing the problems in the banking system while we see if those problems ruin us financially. That would be ludicrous. In fact, that would be beyond ludicrous.

GUESS WHAT’S BEING SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED.

Last seen in London.

Well, it’s not quite so bad as that. At least Vince Cable is speaking a little sense.

“[The] uncertainty and instability in financial markets make it all the more necessary that we press ahead to make our banks safe and reform them.”

I couldn’t agree more. The best time to rebuild your lab is when the last experiment blew up everything but the foundations. At least the stuff that doesn’t work will be clear, and the robots that were well designed will be left standing. In a manner of speaking.

But the CBI is pushing for the reforms to be put off ’til later.

British Bankers’ Association chief executive Angela Knight said banks should be allowed to “finance the recovery first, pay back the taxpayer next”, and only then set about reform.

Yeah, because our government has shown how capable it is of making the banks hand over large chunks of money. They handled the practice of bankers bonuses so very well.

This is becoming “jam tomorrow”. If we let them push it back, they’ll find ways to not have to give us our jam, even if that means hiding the jar, or throwing it down the stairs so no-one can have any jam, and we all have to make do with marmalade. Erm, I mean huge amouts of debt…

And it worries me that Cameron is saying that he’s going to wait until the report is published before making any decisions.

Why? The report is clearly there to be read and understood. Why would you need to wait until the paper is released. A cynical person might think that this is why so often the results of unpublished papersand reports are discussed before they’re formally released; so they can air concerns, look like they’re thinking about the problem, and then let it sink back into the ether, so they can force the issue through later on, when the report is actually published and public interest has waned. But that’s just too cynical to be true.

Oh, and the dead interesting thing? If pushed back, the results of the reforms may only be seen after the next general election. They know they’re not getting re-elected, so this is just a huge middle finger to the next government. And, by extension, us.