The banks must be forced to put their house in order

Independent
"The economy might not be experiencing a V-shaped recovery, but the banks which helped to cause this crisis certainly appear to be. Some of the largest investment banks on Wall Street have reported hefty profits in recent weeks. They were followed yesterday by Barclays and HSBC. .... Barclays and HSBC did not take capital from the Government, but they did avail themselves of the Bank of England's Special Liquidity Scheme. This support, along with the blanket public guarantee of their liabilities, has driven down the banks' cost of capital. New evidence also suggests investment banks on both sides of the Atlantic are making a killing from central bank quantitative easing schemes.In this context of massive public sector support, it is scandalous that the practice of paying staff excessive bonuses persists. These bankers should really be paying back their bonuses of previous years which, as we now see, were based on illusory profits, not raking in new ones."