Bash the banks

This from irritated of Epsom. Because I read that all manner of regulatory folk are getting stuck into HSBC because their computer threw a wobbly the other day.

First, computers are complicated things and they will go wrong from time to time. That is the price you have to pay for progress, for the computers moving with the times, with the competition. A computer that moves is much more likely to go wrong than one that never changes.

Second, HSBC will be punished enough by the moaning of customers and, at the margin, the loss of customers. All those people who might have bought into HSBC - but who now won't. The market place will do its stuff, will do, for once, what it says on the tin.

Third, such a failure is only going to be a major pain to a customer who is in a bit of a pickle for some other reason. Who has, for example, delayed making an important payment until the very last moment. Regular folk, like us here in Epsom, keep our affairs in better order.

So why do the regulators need to muscle in? Are they still so embarrassed by the banking failures that they failed to prevent and the fancy salaries & bonuses that are still with us, that they feel the need to publicly flex their muscles at every opportunity, however feeble?

I think I have moaned about this before, but cannot now trace the moan.

PS: thinking with my fingers, do the people who regulate shops get into a lather every time that Tesco makes a mess of re-ordering Bounty Bars and the Bounty Bar shelves lie empty for a few days? Do we get to see distraught & dishevelled bountophiles wailing & gnashing their teeth on the television news?

PPS: odd how one really does think with one's fingers. You get going with the keyboard and the stuff comes pouring out, in a way that it would not if you were trying to do it by power of thought alone.