May 22, 2015

If you fine a bank, request payment in shares, not in cash against their equity, which is societal masochism.

Sir, you write: “The modern dependence upon credit for growth is too great for the capital that supports it to be treated casually”, “Shareholders punished for the sins of the trader” May 22. I am glad to see that you now at long last warn about the negative should-be-expected-unexpected consequences that fines can have. I have written to you several letters on this but, as usual, as your policy, these have been ignored.

I hope you now recommend what I have been recommending for quite sometime, namely the option for the authorities to collect those fines in newly issued bank shares, and which could then be resold some years later to the markets.

To collect fines from banks, in cash, against their equity, is basically societal masochism.


@PerKurowski