May 3, 2018	INDEX
Those who have been following the Totally Shambolic Bank story (especially those who are unlucky enough to have put money into it), probably find it difficult to believe that this could happen to a bank in the 21st century. But private banks, and in practice most private financial institutions, are an insane idea. To have a sound business in the money market you need to lend over the short term and borrow over the long term. Banks do the opposite making them inherently crazy institutions. The only practical way to get round this problem is to have socialised financial institutions. Hence the building society movement and the provident insurance companies. No building society ever goes bust. Northern Rock, a one time building society, entered the record books a decade ago as the first bank to have a run since 1866, after it was privatised. TSB was privatised by Thatcher. She could do this because Atlee's Labour Government nationalised it in the 1940s. A great mistake (but Atlee got so many things right he could be forgiven). Prior to nationalisation TSB was a hotch potch of small, community based financial institutions, up and down the country. My old friend Johnny Walsh used to be the president of the TSB in Leyton.			May 3, 2018 Jonathan Brind INDEX