Limiting bonuses will not solve the deep problems in the banking sector – Telegraph.

I have to confess that I thought that Adair Turner had gone out of his tiny priviliged mind (after all he is the man who until recently didn’t know what an Oyster card was) when I read the coverage of his comments about the social utility of much banking activity.  Roger Bootle is very interesing though on the futility both of much current banking activity and ironically of attempts to ban the  bonuses that it generates.

The bonus debate is contemptible of course, led as it is by grandstanding politicians with no serious intent to reform banking , even if they are driven by a desire to assuage genuine popular anger.

Who would argue with Bootle’s conclusion:

The solution is not intervention to suppress markets and regulate pay but rather intervention to help markets work better.