The Taibbi rule on bank lobbying - we want it now

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“We need a government that genuinely believes it is bigger than Goldman Sachs,” said the London Evening Standard’s excellent financial columnist Anthony Hilton last week.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “we lack any leader in Europe who can say that and look as if he or she means it.”

Why are our leaders so pusillanimous when it comes to economics? There are exceptions, of course, but they get pushed in aside in the rush to Wait and See – by those who cling to the old order and have not yet grasped that the days when bankers and finance ran the world is now over. It has to be over, or we’re over.

What is holding them back?  Well, many things, cultural and psychological, of course, not least of which is Keynes’ famous dictum that “practical men ... are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.

Sadly, most of our policy-makers are practical men and they still wear their shackles. Nervously it is true, especially as the Arab Spring has now spread, and for very similar reasons, to the financial districts in the cities of the west.

But one reason they still wear their shackles is the extensive activities of the lobbyists of the financial industry. They may not have the answers, but they are throwing up enough obfuscatory dust to delay decisive action, possibly disastrously.

Which is why we should immediately demand that our own government adopts wheat you might call the Taibbi Rule, after the man who coined it, Rolling Stone magazine’s outspoken financial commentator Matt Taibbi.

No bank which has been bailed out by government finds since 2008, and still owes the taxpayers money, should be allowed to spend their money – our money – on lobbyists.

This is actually one off five proposals that Taibbi makes to the Wall Street protestors – who do, after all, need a clearer agenda. 

But it is a good proposal and we should immediately insert it into the government’s plans – eagerly awaited after the fall of Liam Fox – to control political lobbying over here. Spread the word.