Wait a minute, haven’t I heard that phrase before, or something like it? Too big to fail? Yes, the banks.
Now I’m no Euro-maniac, and indeed can be highly suspicious of some of the motivations and leadership shown across the channel, but David Cameron’s recent rejection of the proposed new Euro-Treaty on the grounds of the damage it would have on the City of London for me carries echoes of old attitudes towards the press. Here is an industry whose mores and behaviour we seem to being told we have to accept as a given, unchallengeable, as if they are beyond the normal rules of common decency (bonuses anyone?).
Everything has to be done to protect them because, at the end of the day, we have become frightened of them. Every other industry has to face up to the reality of global change, but not, it seems, the banks. Where once politicians were afraid of newspaper editors, now they run scared of bank bosses – this despite the fact that the taxpayer ultimately pays the salaries of half of them!
Financial hotshots? Despicable. Journalists? Terrible people. Now try and conjure up an image of the worst possible combination: Financial Journalists.
Ladies and Gentlemen … I give you: Robert Peston.
