How has the state punished the financial industry for its crimes,  corruption and anti-social behaviour?

By showering it with subsidies, privileges,  perks and by offering it protection from an angry public. And by reducing its profitability and capacity to change by piling new regulatory layers and requirements.

And this remains true not just of the UK and US. It is true of European countries as well.

There is no incentive to improve their behaviour.

This is another unavoidable lesson. Banking has not been reformed by actions taken by the state, central banks or regulators since the crisis. Indeed they have set back the prospects for improvement.

There were two main strands in the policy response to the crisis. One was monetary policy – the experiment in QE, discussed in Lessons 1-3. The other was regulatory.

Banking industry leaders have resisted all efforts to reform. That shows that in the current state of society, banking can be regulated – raising costs to society – but not restructured.

The original plan for this issue was to cover the main trends from last week's Money20/20 conference and get a sense of how banking, payments, and FinTech have evolved over the last year and what the year ahead looks like.

Talk about bombshells. On October 15th, the Washington Post and 60 Minutes released a detailed and damning investigative report titled “The Drug Industry’s Triumph Over the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency).” The report chronicles how Big Pharma and its Congressional allies orchestrated passage of legislation that has severely weakened the DEA’s ability to curtail illegal distribution of opioid drugs.   
 

Collaboration between banks and FinTech startups came to focus as financial media expanded on the need for collaboration, and a blockchain summit provided some cogent examples.

"Since 2016, there has been a significant move from banks fearing start-ups and start-ups wanting to disrupt banks, to start-ups and banks working together in harmony," writes Chris Skinner in "FinTech Collaboration."

Co-authored with Jake Crampton, founder and CEO of MedSpeed.

Two Banking Conferences Last week I split my time between two conferences focused on banking and FinTech: two very different worlds that have more common than not, as this series of quotes show.

Merle Phillips is a petite 110-year old 4’9” fireball who keeps doing big things. She’s writing her twelfth book and recently created a new version of Scrabble to pitch to game-maker Hasbro. Reaching 110 makes Merle a “super-centenarian.” This is a most exclusive club. There are likely fewer than 50 American super-centenarians alive today.