"Should"

From the BBC:

A network of national funds should be introduced so the cost of bank failures are not met by the taxpayer, the EU internal market commissioner has said. Michel Barnier said such funds would provide part of a broader system aimed at preventing future financial crises. Banks would be required to pay a levy into the funds which would not be used to bail out failing banks, but manage failures in "an orderly way"....

Mr Barnier said: "I believe in the 'polluter pays' principle. It is not acceptable that taxpayers should continue to bear the heavy cost of rescuing the banking sector. They should not be in the front line,"

And the EU report said that any levies that banks were made to pay should not be passed on to their customers in the form of higher charges.

Nice one, Barney.

The first 'should' means "We think it desirable... and therefore it will happen".

The next two 'shoulds' are worse. He pretends to be sticking up for taxpayers versus the Big Bad Banks, even though the EU-driven and taxpayer-funded Greek bail-out was, indirectly, a way of bailing out the French and German banks who had lent Greece money.

The last 'should' means "It would be nice if, and we're not taking the blame if it doesn't work out like this". Is he or is he not aware that it is nigh impossible to design a banking levy that is not somehow reflected in higher interest rates and charges for borrowers or lower interest rates paid to depositors?

(Debt-for-equity swaps, that's the way forward - it's tried and tested and it works; it's what happens in the absence of any government meddling. And of course tweaking the tax system to prevent house price bubbles, for without an asset price bubble there cannot be a credit bubble. And as I said earlier, before we start inventing new taxes and levies on UK banks, let's make them repay the £400 billion that the taxpayer has stumped up and then make up our minds what to do next, if anything.)