Turner pans banks for 'worthless' innovations

Adair Turner, chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority, has accused banks of using financial innovation "to extract economic rents rather than deliver services of real value to the real economy", and called for higher capital levels and constraints on bank activities, in a speech to the Global Financial Forum in New York. Outlining the huge costs of the current financial crisis, Turner remarked: "Any benefits of the wave of complex financial innovation we have been through would have had