Letter: Economic mess needs a fresh approach

WHAT A mess these financial folk have got us into. The financial and political elites are so preoccupied with feathering their own nests, the rest of us are left out in the cold (your report, 8 August).

It is high time that our academic institutions and think tanks initiated some open debate about getting this money business back on track, because the present elites either can't or won't.

This is far too important to leave to economists and bankers who earn their living by manipulating the debt business.

There are other ways of financing genuine economic activity. Do you remember those old-fashioned savings banks and building societies? The days of stock markets which existed to capitalise growing businesses? When casinos were restricted to Las Vegas and Monte Carlo?

When you could save for a pension and be confident the pot would be there when needed? When printing money was a criminal offence, and spending what you didn't have was fraud … and when countries which imported too much had to devalue their currencies - instead of being bailed out by private banks with money they don't have?

Whenever the integrity of the national currency is corrupted, the entire economic process falls apart. And that is where we are today.

It will not be resolved by the tinkering of the present elites, but it does need people with credibility to start talking seriously about the alternatives - and they are out there - and what it will take to get us back to financial honesty.

RF Morrison

Colquhoun Street

Helensburgh

RONALD Rankin's perceptive analysis of the problems at Royal Bank of Scotland (Letters, 8 August) overlooks what to many is an unbelievable situation, which is that while 83 per cent owned by the government, RBS continues on its own course as if nothing had happened.

Jobs are to be exported to call centres in India, and bonuses are paid as usual.

Why no voice of dissent from the board representative of the actual owner of RBS? I presume there is one.

Malcolm Parkin

Gamekeepers Road

Kinnesswood, Kinross