The Commission on Banking Standards released their much anticipated report this week. Howard Davies, writing on the Project Syndicate blog, discusses the implications of harsher punishment for bankers and dismisses the notion that London will be knocked off its perch as a top financial centre. Duncan Weldon of the ToUChstone blog discusses the messiness of banking policy in the UK at the moment.

Howard Reed argues for an increased wealth tax in the UK on the Politics in Spires blog, arguing that ‘the need to find additional public resources to reduce or obviate the need for painful spending cuts and fund growing long-term demand for public services makes wealth an attractive potential tax base’.

Greg Mankiw has recently released a paper entitled ‘Defending the One Percent‘. In a counterpoint piece, Miles Corak discusses the intergenerational implications of growing inequality between the top income earners and the rest of the distribution.

Prem Sikka, writing for The Conversation, assesses the G8 Summit as high on vague promises about taxes and little in the way of actual commitments.

Colin Talbot of the Whitehall Watch blog examines the IPPR report on ministers and mandarins.