Trust in the financial sector is at an all-time low: only 10 per cent of respondents to a recent ITN poll believed that bankers told the truth. That places bankers even lower than journalists and politicians. Yet trust is the essence of financial intermediation. The core purpose of a financial system is to enable savers to have confidence in borrowers whom they do not know: confidence that they will earn the returns they expect and be able to realise their investment when they need funds. This is the issue I have explored in my review of UK equity markets, whose findings are published today.
人們對金融行業的信任度眼下處於史上最低水準：獨立電視新聞(ITN)最近的一項民調顯示，只有10%的受訪者認爲銀行家說的是實話。人們對銀行家的信任度甚至比記者和政客還要低。然而，信任卻是金融媒介職能的基礎。金融體系的核心目標就是讓儲蓄者對不瞭解的借款者有信心：相信自己能夠獲得希望的收益，並且在需要資金的時候能夠將投資變現。這是我在對英國股市的評析中探索的問題，評析結論於近日發佈。