³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Mr Crick, why are you wasting time on this trivia and not carrying out a tirade against Jacqui Smith's abuse of the system of MPs' allowances? Oh, I forgot, she is Labour!

Here is something for the anoraks, why did Gordon and Tony move this FSA director to the LSE?

Sir Howard Davies, had a "heightened interest" in toxic
financial instruments in 2002, apparently did nothing to stop
their toxic effect at the FSA, and is now a non-executive Director of
Morgan Stanley and a member of the advisory boards of the China
Banking Regulatory Commission (since 2003) and the China
Securities Regulatory Commission (since 2004) and currently
Director of the London School of Economics and Political
Science.



His appointments have included Executive Chairman of the
Financial Services Authority from 1997-2003. He was the first
Chairman of the FSA, the single financial regulator for the UK
financial sector. He was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England
from 1995 to 1997, until the incoming Labour government asked
him to create the new regulator.

In 2004 he became a non-executive Director of Morgan Stanley. He
was appointed to the Board of Paternoster Limited in 2006 as a
non-executive Director. Paternoster is a regulated insurance
company that takes on the risks associated with companies' final
salary/defined benefit pension schemes and assumes the
responsibility for paying their pensioners into the future.



In a previous post at:-

/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/01/shortly_after_labours_2005_ele.html

I wrote:

As far back as 7 years ago, on Tuesday, 26 February, 2002, 08:49
GMT the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ published this article entitled "A scandal waiting
to happen?"



in which Sir Howard Davies, then chairman of UK regulator the
Financial Services Authority, was quoted warning about the
perils of dealing with toxic financial instruments. During a
speech on insurance regulation, Sir Howard remarked:

"One investment banker recently described synthetic CDOs to me
as 'the most toxic element of the financial markets today'. When
an investment banker talks of toxicity, a regulator is bound to
take a heightened interest."

A year later this inconvenient regulator with "a heightened
interest" was getting in the way of this new way of pumping up
the money supply via the backdoor, and had often been reported
warning of the asset bubble in property in the UK. So, in true
Yes Minister fashion, Sir Howard Davies was shunted off to a new
job at the London School of Economics.



There is no way they can credibly say that nobody saw it
coming. And that must include Gordon and Tony.

#3 John_Gapper

Thanks - especially for the links. Some really good "smoking gun" stuff there.

This is my first visit to Mr.C's blog.

Some pretty esoretic stuff in these columns.

If this is anorak material, I'm off to burn a particular outer garment.

Ralf Dahrendorf was a West German Commissioner back in the day and sits in the Lords now, I believe...