When the City suffers the rest of the country will suffer, as well. Those much derided bankers, traders and hedge fund managers bring in a lot of money. And they do not like what is coming from the British government and, especially, the European Union.

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That's not right!The bankers are meant to leave the City and go to Frankfurt. Guess the EU will have to force Switzerland to join the EU FSA.

On a related note, has the "droit de suite" had the predicted results in the fine arts markets? Or has the current downturn made ii impossible to tell.

What wealth does the City create and how does it do so? If it creates wealth and is so vital to our economic well-being, why is the UK (denuded of manufacturing) suffering more in this downturn than countries such as France, Italy and especially Germany which have retained indutrial bases and domestic ownership of them?

Implying CoL tax revenues at ~ £25 billion.
And I'd guess that's real hard foreign earnings.

Could someone please educate the head of the FSA as to who picks up the cost of any taxes on businesses.[HINT: It isn't the businesses.]

Lord Turner backs new banking tax


Why should British bank customers pay through the nose to fund 'global public goods'? Taxation isn't meant to pay to soothe the consciences of our bureaucrats. How naive he is to think it would be ringfenced too.

Ah, same old, same old.

Evil money-grubbing bankers vs. Arbeiter der Stirn und Faust.
And the riddle of money and wealth every 'activist' in the past and present has been pondering on.

Lovely.

Go on then harris. Explain to this ignorant engineer exactly how the City creates wealth and why we don't need industry. The latter is inferred from your condescending manner of writing.

Hey ... we manufacture money don't we ... that makes it manufacturing industry!

My subtext detector is pinging away at a right old rate when I set on pre-emptive.

PING PING PING PING PING PHKNG PING....

Sadly I think it's only a matter of time before this happens. The Swiss have recently been forced to sign bilateral deals on banking secrecy with other countries. For example most recently the French

http://www.france24.com/en/20090827-switzerland-france-ink-tax-deal

Can't even be cynical without being right,.... that is soooo depressing.

Perhaps you have read over the quite apt explantion someone else gave you the last time:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1007501&p=84243&hilit=grubbing#p84245

You want me to explain why you don't need 'industry'? That's silly since I did not suggest that.

You don't need certain industries if your country is importing the respective products.
Germany for instance has lost most of its textile industry. It's importing instead because the international division of labor makes it cheaper. If a country manages to create its complete income from offering financial services it don't need something what you call industry at all.

The problem is that you as an 'activist' - per definitionem one may say - think that wealth literally only can be things that can be touched, eaten etc. pp. whatever (see link above).
In this view international division of labor, the structure of production relations per se can not be wealth. They may produce wealth but they aren't.( Furthermore wealth is considered to be somehow constant. Therefore the fetishist view on real estate and gold which are considered to be oh so safe investments.) Services related to trading, lending money and capital you deem to be unproductive and not wealth producing, dispensable Überbau like the marxists say, and eventually stealing and outright evil.

That's 'activist' textbook basics. Only the jews are missing in this world view - for now.

I interpreted the question as: has the time come whereby our comparative advantage as an island lies in an export-orientated economic model like Japan - we could gain more (than £25bn in tax revenues, if not absolutely then in terms of relative government expenditure due to the beneficial impact on society of industry take-home versus banker wages) if we switched from banking to industry?