eu funding for consumer organizations July 9, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : consumers , comments closedThe EU’s Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC) has issued a call for applications for funding for consumer organizations:
Financial support may be awarded towards the functioning of two types of European organisations:
– those which have as their primary objectives and activities the promotion and protection of the health, safety and economic interests of consumers in the Community…
– those which have as their primary objectives and activities to represent consumer interests in the standardisation process at Community level…
uk financial regulation (building britain’s future) July 8, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation , comments closedAs part of the ongoing restructuring of financial regulation, the Chancellor announced new proposals for changing financial regulation (the full document is here (with the Building Britain’s Future logo on the front)). The Chancellor wants:
better informed consumers, who have greater choices, in a more competitive market
In order to help consumers there’s a proposal to consolidate existing FSA resources to provide separate independent consumer education. It’s not clear exactly what this means. But it’s supposed to “empower” consumers. The full document says there is to be a national money guidance service (more of what is being done already, but there is a consultation in an annex to the document which asks for reactions) and that there are to be simple financial products available:
so that there is always an easy-to understand option for consumers who are not looking for potentially complex or
sophisticated products.
Of course this doesn’t guarantee that consumers will choose the simpler products (tellingly, in the consultation section there’s a question asking why some simpler products don’t sell well), or that they will be more suitable to any particular consumer than more complex products. And strikingly to someone based in the US, the section of the report dealing with remedies for consumers states:
The Government believes that the emphasis should remain on ensuring that firms compensate the consumer voluntarily.
There’s a lot more, including proposals for more effective (not better) regulation (in the report there are some references to the idea of better (in the sense of more effective) regulation), and a new proposal for a Council for Financial Stability — which will bring together the Bank of England, the FSA and the Treasury, with some references to governance arrangements (interesting in the light of the IMF’s recently published working paper on financial regulator governance arrangements). The FSA is to be given a new statutory duty to promote sound international regulation and supervision, and there’s a promise to propose to the G20 in the fall arrangements for workouts for large multinational banks.
befriending consumers July 3, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : consumers , comments closedAs people are finding it harder to be consumers, everyone wants to (seem to) be nice to them: the US Treasury published a bill to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the UK published a Consumer White Paper (A Better Deal for Consumers), and the EU Commission published a Communication which adopted a “consumer enforcement package” to strengthen EU-wide enforcement of consumer rules. The FSA announced that the new Chairman of the Financial Services Consumer Panel is to be Adam Phillips, who has been the Vice Chair. The previous Chair, Lord Lipsey, apparently thought the Panel should be more aggressive than did others at the FSA. I’m not sure how much of a champion of consumer rights Adam Phillips is – he is in the business of market research after all – but the Panel has been quite active in the last 6 months or so (under Phillips’ leadership) and has pushed the FSA to take consumer interests seriously.
eurospeak July 1, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : language , comments closedMost of the media response to the EU Commission’s announcement of a removal of some restrictions on shapes and sizes of various types of produce which can be sold in the EU focuses on how long it took for the Commission to see sense and how consumers will benefit from access to cheaper (though uglier) produce. But the words used to describe what can now be sold are interesting.
The Commission’s press release had the title: The return of the bendy cucumber: ‘wonky’ fruit and vegetables back on sale from 1st July. The French equivalent for “wonky” in the press release is “hors normes”.
EUobserver picks up the terminology of the Commission in its headline on the story: Wonky fruit to return to EU shops. The BBC reports the story briefly using wonky in single quotation marks, but other UK media and the Australian media leave them out.
We don’t know which version was the translation – the French term fits pretty well with the whole idea of non-conformity to standards whereas the English, slangier, term suggests not just non-conformity, but oddness or weirdness or even, according to urban dictionary, not working. So, was the use of the English slang expression tactical, designed to resonate with media which are often critical of the EU and gain publicity for eliminating red tape? Perhaps there was a bit more play for the story in English language media than in francophone media where there were some stories but perhaps not as many. But the reactions in English language media were perhaps more mixed than the Commission might have hoped. The Times Online says:
Brussels has for years complained of “Euro myths”over bans on climbing ladders, playing pub darts or drinking shandy. But even the barmiest of bureaucrats was forced to accept that its Byzantine rulebook for fruit and veg required revision.
w(h)ither financial regulation? June 26, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation , comments closedAs the Financial Stability Board holds its inaugural meeting, and the IMF invites civil society to comment on IMF governance (here), Vince Cable at the New Statesman has a depressing assessment of what is going on with financial regulation reform in the UK:
It is deeply worrying that some of the most important policy questions for a generation are now being decided by default and in a political vacuum…The response to all these questions is a lazy, uncritical, self-serving one: that, bar a few regulatory tweaks that will need to be made, the previous regime was essentially fine….Yet it is only a matter of months since half of the British banking system collapsed and had to be rescued by the state through total or partial nationalisation.
I’m not sure that things are much better in the US. The administration’s reform proposals are much weedier than they might have been. ISDA is busy warning the FSA to be more careful and slower about introducing changes to regulation. And ISDA suggests that the FSA can learn from the policy discussions in the US:
…further levels of standardization may actually be of debatable value. In this area, the public-policy debate in the US is instructive. A number of end-user organizations have indicated quite clearly that, while they support the objective of greater systemic resilience, they oppose artificial limits on the range of contracts available to them. Their needs are only truly served by the ability of financial services firms to tailor contracts to their specific requirements.
Sounds like business as usual.
guardian highlights new fsa failing June 19, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : financial regulation , comments closedMuch of the investor education movement involves information provided by firms who hope to make money out of customers by seeming to be friendly to their needs. The Guardian’s disclosures about the FSA’s moneymadeclear website (“helping you with your money”) today perhaps suggest the UK needs a consumer protection regulator as much as the US does:
The FSA’s site, Moneymadeclear, was set up to provide easy-to-understand and independent information and tools to help consumers learn about financial products.
While the site offers purpose-built tools to help people compare mortgages and savings accounts, the only link for comparison sites on its cards and loans page is to LendersCompared.org.uk, which is paid for by the largest home credit companies in the UK….
The cheapest rate Guardian Money could find quoted on the LendersCompared site was in excess of 120% APR, while the most expensive — a £100 home collected loan from CLC Finance repaid in 15 instalments of £10 a week — has an APR of 1,303.2% APR.
languages of government June 18, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : translation , comments closedI learned today (when I was looking for the Company Rescue Consultation document) that the UK Insolvency Service provides publications in:
Urdu, Traditional Chinese, Welsh, Sylheti and MP3.
who looks after the public interest ? June 18, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : governance , comments closedGovernmental (and quasi-governmental) statements and actions with respect to regulation are a bit confusing these days. Today, the Commission, in a communication about internet governance, makes the following statement:
It is also important to recognise that public attitudes have changed towards the concept of self-regulation in the wake of the financial crisis. When critical resources are concerned, whether they are banking systems or Internet infrastructure and services, there is now a higher and understandable expectation that governments will be more proactive than they may have been in the past in defending the public interest.
But of course, the public may be disappointed – many of those in charge are the same people who have been (and still are in some contexts) spreading the better regulation gospel.
uphill struggle for lecce framework June 16, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : Uncategorized , comments closedThe G8 finance ministers agreed the other day that:
For the market economy to generate sustained prosperity, fundamental norms of propriety, integrity and transparency in economic interactions must be respected.
But there’s regular evidence that this is an uphill struggle. Today the FSA announced the appearance in court of two lawyers charged with insider trading. Lawyers should surely know better (especially after O’Hagan) although they don’t seem to – insider trading is a pretty obvious breach of the law, and of propriety too.
departmental deck chairs June 8, 2009
Posted by Bradley in : Uncategorized , comments closedThe UK’s Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is merging with the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills to create a new department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS). It’s not obvious what the point of this rebranding is. BERR isn’t even two years old – it replaced the old DTI in 2007. The reaction at science business isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement:
The announcement of the new department does not say if the remit of DBIS includes rearranging the canvas covered collapsible seating on the decks of large ‘unsinkable’ ocean-going liners at risk of hitting an iceberg.