Gillian Tett looks beyond yesterday's Today item on "jurisdiction shopping" by banks. She warns there is an unintended consequence of the current worldwide desire to bash the bankers. Legislators in key countries are busy unilaterally changing internationally-agreed rules. Unfortunately, Tett says, this makes it more likely that practices illegal in one country but legal in another will be used to cover up looming catastrophes in the capital markets.
Having had to sit on the sidelines for what must have seemed like an eternity, watching daily Telegraph exclusives on MPs' expenses, The Guardian is hoping making its mark on the story with an interesting crowdsourcing experiment.
It is publishing all of the heavily-censored documents released today under FoI legislation on its web site and is asking readers to help its team of journalists trawl through them. Anybody can get involved by reading the various claim forms and receipts, categorising them, and noting anything that looks particularly suspicious or unusual. So far, around half of the 19,000 or so pages the Guardian has published have been reviewed.
There's an element of cleaning up after the Lord Mayor's Show to it, but it would be great if an overlooked gem or two emerges from the exercise.
