US President Barack Obama has proposed significant new curbs on the activities of banks to try to prevent future financial crises.
"Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by banks that are too big to fail," Mr Obama said.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8473294.stm
The Lib Dems have been arguing for this for a while
Is it not also the case that this proposed exercise in splitting the banks doesn't deal with the central issue: which is the one highlighted by the Governor of the Bank of England in respect of banks that are too big to fail being too big.
www.vincentcable.com/news/001606/betting_has_become_the_banks_core_business.html
The Tories have said they will do the same thing as Obama, but only if there is international agreement:
George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, has just told me that Obama's plan to break up the banks is consistent with the views he expressed in his recent bank reform paper.
His condition for implementing such a radical plan was that it needed international agreement.
Well, he has got that now. So he has told me - explicitly - that a Tory government would impose an identical dismantling of British banks to those suggested by President Obama.
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/01/obama_to_break_up_banks.html
Labour disagrees with this policy
In response, Mr Darling said the problems facing the banking sector were "more complex" than Mr King suggested.
Furthermore, his comments drew a frosty response from Mr Brown, whose government opposes what it regards as a simplistic and out-of-date response to preventing a future crisis.
Mr Brown argued Northern Rock had to be rescued, even though it was a simple mortgage bank, while Lehman Brothers was an investment bank without high street customers.
www.ftadviser.com/FTAdviser/Regulation/Regulators/Treasury/News/article/20091022/0fce45b6-beeb-11de- 8a16-00144f2af8e8/Mervyn-King-rebuked-by-Brown-and-Darling-over-bank-proposals.jsp