Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

On the second day of bank profit results, as Northern Rock and Lloyds follow HSBC's profit leap, commentators look at the relationship between government and banks.

the decision was taken not to nationalise wholesale and that means banks profits have to be tolerated:

"The Government could have opted for some kind of radical social experiment in the political allocation of credit, but instead opted to stick with the existing, market-based system, warts and all. Despite the manifest failures of the old system, this was in every respect the right decision...
Μύ
"You cannot have politically directed credit, however well intended. To do so risks not just pork-barrel politics but, more to the point, the possibility that governments would end up bankrupting the country in pursuit of freely available credit for all. Wasn't it too much mispriced credit that caused the crunch in the first place?"

that it is the government's responsibility to get out of the recession, not the banks:

"I carry no brief for British banks. They seem to have no concept of the venom felt towards them by a public that rightly attributes its misery to their greed. Millions of people are losing their jobs, savings and futures because of the actions of spivs and gamblers who pass for certain bank employees. For these same people this year to pay themselves grotesque bonuses out of the savings (or dividends) that properly belong to others is obscene. Only the craven sycophancy of Labour and coalition ministers to their banker friends allows this racket to continue....
Μύ
"But that is not today's issue. This is how to get out of the mire. The government is just not clear what it wants, whether it wants banks to take bigger or smaller risks."

[subscription required] while arguing the government can't leave banks alone again:

"[T]o blame greedy bankers for unemployment, business failures and cuts is a classic case of shooting the messenger when it is serious thinking about the message that is required....
Μύ
"That message is as simple as it is controversial - financial markets can make disastrous mistakes and cannot be relied on to correct their own excesses. That, in turn, means that governments must sometimes override the judgment of financial markets and the autonomy of bankers."

that the profits show that buying the shares was unnecessary for the government:

"There are a lot of questions about whether the original nationalisation of these banks was really that necessary. At the time there was all this talk about throwing tax payers money at the banks to bail them out. It turns out in fact that they have been profitable investments and they are good businesses for the most part...
Μύ
"There was all this nonsense in the media about these banks being bust. They weren't bust at all. They had a cash problem which would have been dealt with by loans from the Bank of England."

why the news coming out in the same week about banks' contribution to the economy as the UK's biggest exporter is ignored:

"[W]e find it hard as a country to celebrate success. Our attitude towards the financial services industry is ambivalent at the moment for obvious reasons. But once our banks are back on their feet and the nationalised ones have been sold back at a profit to the private sector, then maybe we can be rational about this industry and try and understand its significance."

• More reactions to Monday's HSBC profits