Working from the Telegraph’s summary of the recommendations.
Role on non-executives directors needs to be strengthened with them taking responsibility for monitoring risk and pay.
Most non-executives to spend substantially more time on the job.
Induction process for all non-executives and regular training to enable them to “assess risk and ask tough questions about strategy”.
It’s hard to see [...]

…to the Walker Review.
It won’t work. It’s not that banks weren’t measuring risk: they were measuring it… badly.
More on this tomorrow.

It is reported by the BBC that the UK government is considering restricting banks’ ability to pay bonuses to employees who take “reckless” risks.  This assumes that:

Banks would otherwise want their employees to take reckless risks.
There are good ways to determine ex-ante which risks are reckless.

Ignoring the first point, I have severe doubts about the [...]

Terence Kealey wrote this article for the New Scientist magazine. In it his makes some pretty big errors and perpetuates some myths that should not be perpetuated. Here is the letter I sent him with my criticisms:
Dear Prof. Kealey,
I read your article on economics in the New Scientist with interest, and greatly enjoyed [...]

Apparently 6 banks are going to require additional capital following the results of U.S. government stress tests. This includes Citi and BoA.
Apparently there are three ways being offered for the banks to shore up there capital. Two of them, additional government aid and the sale of more stock look unlikely. The third method [...]

Willem Buiter makes some points about unsecured bondholders in a good blog post that will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the pro bankruptcy/restructuring arguments (I suggest reading this pamphlet).
The same policy should be pursued wherever banks have failed: it never makes sense to put the interests of the unsecured creditors before those [...]

Good article on this topic in the New York Times by Andrew Rosenfeld.
There is a simpler, sounder and fairer way to recapitalize an insolvent bank. The government should seize it, as it is already authorized — indeed, compelled — to do. Then it could inject cash (in the form of Treasury notes) as equity in [...]

Fascinating article from Reuters by James Saft on how governments are propping up banks by lending against newly securitized debt.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the biggest single month ever for securitization in Europe and Britain was sometime before we all realized that we were in a credit bubble, sometime like the sunny days [...]