Multi-faith please step down on this one!

What are these working groups? Where and when do they meet? How much do they overlap and duplicate each other?

There is a culture of compromise and letting business do whatever it wants in the UK that is shocking to people from countries like Germany used to a more robust regulatory regime. Regulators are not supposed to try to make the industry it regulates happy. I am from the States and the framework of regulation is adversarial and I like it that way. Not to say the US doesn’t have problems, it does, some of the same revolving door issues as here. But I want my regulators to be champions of the people, not lapdogs of the banks. I am just worried that this culture of consensus and compromise between regulators and regulated industries in the UK is going to die only like racism in the US: one funeral at a time.

I wonder how the FSA would rate themselves on their “consumer protection” statutory objective? Allowing the banks to run such risky strategies that bail-outs were necessary was terrible for consumers. And some people think the FSA did warn people, but who at the FSA is going to push an unpopular message like that when they are all looking to get a job at a bank in a year or so? Why couldn’t we just have a consumer protection authority?

I hope whomever is going to the meeting for Occupy is equipped with information. I find the comparisons to other financial services authorities interesting. For instance, during the four year period between 2002 and 2006, the FSA averaged 77 enforcement cases (that resulted in action) while the SEC averaged 3,624. ( see http://www.theracetothebottom.org/international-governance/sec-v-fsa-rules-v-principles.html) . Private Eye covers this stuff really well – all the missed opportunities.

Good luck with the meeting. I wonder if it would be useful to treat this as an information-gathering session rather than an advocacy session. I would like to know what their biggest concerns are about the next ten years and what structural changes they would like to see within the FSA to give it more bite – or what they see as the problems with Osborne’s plan (there are so many it could take up the whole hour). I honestly don’t think that anyone at the FSA could imagine it, but maybe it is even asking about how to de-couple the self-interest and future job prospects of an individual employed by the FSA from the strategy and decisions the FSA makes.

Remember that these people are immersed in a culture where it is nearly impossible to imagine asking banks to be moral, or calling the actions (and inactions) of a government agency moral or immoral. It is like the concept of snow to an indigenous Pacific Islander.

Good luck!