Bank shares for the masses

Nick Clegg really needs to look at his history of the 1980s. When Margaret Thatcher sold off many nationalised industries she declared that it was to to be the start of a 'share and property owning democracy'. This was a genuine aspiration. She was right, of course, that property owning was to be immensely popular, but those members of the public, me included, who bought blocks of shares in the privatised industries got shot of them as soon as a tidy profit was in the offing.

The same will happen with shares in the banks when they are sold back into the market and freebees are given to the public. There will be a stampede to cash in and the shares will end up in the same corporate hands that contributed to the very crisis that led to the banks being part-nationalised.

This leads to the question, what will happen to the quick profits enjoyed by the lucky public ? Well, if they spend it at home, all well and good. If they go abroad there will be little benefit to UK plc.

OK, so it's a reasonable way of pumping money into the economy, but his concept of dispersing ownership of the banks in the hope of making them more accountable is bound to go the same way as Thatcehr's plan.