Sunday Herald: British lemmings will drive our banks over the edge once again

LAST WEEK, like the first cuckoo of spring, we heard the first sign of a return to abnormality in financial affairs: the Nationwide announced the return of the 125% mortgage. Nine months after the greatest financial crisis in 80 years, financial institutions are reinventing the worst excesses of the credit bubble, aided and abetted by the chancellor, Alistair Darling. He made clear last week that there is to be no serious financial regulation in the City of London, still less any break-up of the banking behemoths. Panic over. All that stuff about returning to "good old-fashioned banking" - he was just kidding.