On air: Do you want banks to be good or just good at making money?

It’s a big statement from the man who effectively regulates Britain’s financial sector, and is supposed to be on the side of the banks: Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK thinks banks are “socially useless” and wants to tax them to stop excessive bonuses.

Will it get worse before it gets better?

Hello from Newshour. It’s been a rotten week for the financial markets – above all in the US and the UK. It began with the US investment bank Bear Stearns getting itself into such trouble that it was sold for a song to JP Morgan Chase.

Pakistan votes

Good morning from London, the big international news today is the people of Pakistan voting in a crucial parliamentary election overshadowed by violence and fears of fraud. If the count goes as usual, initial results should be announced about the time we are on air, with a good idea of the final results beginning to come in around 2200 gmt. Should we talk about the elections or wait until tomorrow when we’ll have a better idea of what has happened?

Here in the UK the top story is the nationalisation of Northern Rock. The bank’s troubles are tied to the subprime lending problems in the US and the global economic downturn, which we discussed last month, but could they herald a geopolitical sea change in the world economy, as Martin Jacques argues in The Guardian, that will be more fundamental than that brought by the oil shocks of the 1970s?