Caught on camera, the day smoking Ed Balls triumphed over the Bank of England

1997 documentary reveals how Ed Balls and Ed Miliband helped Brown redraw banking regulations, despite Treasury fears and Bank of England protests.

Ed Balls boasted of over-ruling the Bank of England as Gordon Brown stripped it of the power to regulate the City, a newly-uncovered film reveals.
The act that some economic experts argue contributed to the financial crisis was captured by a documentary film crew.
Gordon Brown’s economic adviser is seen telling a senior journalist that the Bank strongly objected to the plan to hive off regulation of the finance industry to a new watchdog – but they had no “choice” over the decision.
The then-30 year old is later seen jubilant after the BBC’s John Sergeant gave positive coverage of the move to create the Financial Services Authority, telling Mr Brown: “Sergeant bought the whole bloody lot.”
Mr Balls has admitted that Labour failed to regulate the banking industry strictly enough, but argues a different regulatory structure would have made little difference as the crisis swept the world.

Nevertheless, the apparent pride Mr Balls and Charlie Whelan, Gordon Brown’s spokesman, took in disregarding the advice of the Bank and the Treasury's most senior civil servant risks embarrassing the shadow chancellor as his suitability to run the economy becomes a focus of the election campaign.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11411593/Caught-on-camera-the-day-smoking-Ed-Balls-triumphed-over-the-Bank-of-England.html

What an own goal Dodge. They took the regulations out of the hands of the Banks and set up an independent board to oversee them. You should be bloody thankful they did. Of course the Bank strongly objected to it, they wanted to get away with even more, and as they nearly bankrupted the world anyway, what the hell would have happened it there had been nothing to keep them in check.