Bank report published: bank shares rise

Many commentators are saying that the independent banking commission's analysis may be good but its prescriptions weak.  Some kind of firewall/Chinese wall/ring fence between retail banking and investment banking is required, the big brains declare, but we're not saying exactly what kind and, provided the capitalisation of the retail bank is up to scratch, any surplus can be thrown over the wall/fence for dubious use by the denizens of the worldwide casino.

And you can tell how frightening this prospect is to the bankers by their organisations' share prices, which rose in the wake of yesterday's announcements.  Even Lloyds Banking Group was steady, though Vickers recommended that it should be forced to sell a further (also unspecified) number of branches.  The suspension of competition rules at the height of the crisis, which allowed Lloyds to swallow HBOS, was a "bad thing".

In passing I would suggest that Brown and Darling were not stupid or corrupt when they adopted this wheeze:  more likely it was a matter of desperation.  Without Lloyds' help, the government would have been left with a crippled HBOS on its hands and on its books as well as all the other financial flotsam and jetsam.

Regulating any kind of wall, fence or even last ditch would be horribly complicated, so why not "let the market do it"?

Announce that from - say - April 2013 there will be no government support for bank deposits in any organisation which is not properly independent of investment bank encumbrances.  Depositors would vote with their feet, walking away from any "institution" which looked less than enthusiastic to cut itself off.  I haven't worked out what to do for borrowers yet, but there must be a way.