Adair Turner on the Politics of Finance

Tom Sutcliffe discusses money with the American economist Charles Calomiris, who looks back at the history of financial disasters and argues that they're caused more by government failures, than individual bankers. The former head of the Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, might agree on the need for structural changes, but famously said 'heads should roll' in the banking industry, and has damned much of the banks' trading activities as 'socially useless'. If there has been a moral vacuum at the heart of the banking industry, are there lessons to be learnt from Islamic banking? The financial advisor Harris Irfan believes it's a system that is more equitable and transparent. Seventy five years ago Steinbeck's great depression novel, Grapes of Wrath, was published and Maggie Gee explores its legacy and asks where the wrath is now?

Producer: Katy Hickman.