“The Bank of England will study the cumulative economic costs of financial regulations introduced since the global financial crisis, it said on Tuesday, after the government told it to help promote competition and investment.

“Britain spent billions bailing out failing banks in 2008 and 2009. Despite continued public anger over the role of the banks in that crisis, however, finance minister George Osborne has signalled the Conservative government wants to move on since winning re-election in May.”

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“Former FPC member Robert Jenkins said existing rules would be ineffective even when fully implemented, and said they managed to be both too complex and not rigorous enough.

“I would happily trade a reduction in both regulation and regulators for an increase in capital requirements. If we resolve ‘too big to fail’ and require genuine accountability for failure, then we can and should roll back the rule book,” he said.

“Jenkins is now a senior fellow at Better Markets, a U.S. group which campaigns against lax regulation, and said calls for more competition often cloaked an attempt to reduce oversight.

“These are all false choices but have gained traction among policymakers subject to finance’s formidable influence,” he said.”

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Read the full Reuters article by David Milliken here.