UNLIKE many official documents following lengthy investigations, the final report from the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards is far from a damp squib. The cross-party commission doesn’t pull its punches on what needs to be done to clean up the besmirched industry.

YOU would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. The ethical bank is being bailed out by the casino.

IN RATHER dramatic language, it has been called the “Highland Showdown” with Scotland’s premier outdoor event, the Highland Show, being used as the backdrop to the opening shots in the debate over whether Scotland should vote for independence or not next September.

PATIENCE is a great virtue for an investor but it is a discipline often hard to maintain. Barely a month into my investment trust ISA plan for 2013-14 and it is looking decidedly wobbly.

FEW ready reckoners on our economic wellbeing are more closely followed than high-street shopping.

ANOTHER week, yet another round of reductions in savings account rates. Long-suffering savers are now accustomed to the absence of decent cash returns, but they’re also finding out that some cuts are deeper than others.

AS A Bank of England lifer, Paul Tucker will sorely miss the Old Lady when he leaves in the autumn. But will the bank miss him?

Here is your starter for ten: what part of the British Isles has escaped the recession unscathed? Answer; the Isle of Man.

IT’S always gratifying when a well-considered plan is seamlessly executed. Unfortunately, no chance of that with Stephen Hester’s enforced departure from the helm of Royal Bank of Scotland.

SAINSBURY’S has rung up its 34th consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales growth. It’s beginning to resemble consistency. Chief executive Justin King is too canny a retailer to crow and tempt fate.

THE sale of Vue cinemas for close to £1 billion is a significant vote of confidence in the future of movie-going that once looked to be dying out.

IT’S time, it seems, to fill your boots with “smart beta”. This is the new, or nearly new, “must-have”. It certainly sounds better than “dumb alpha”.

FOR more than 40 years Scots business leaders and policymakers have agonised over our record in business growth and entrepreneurship. Why were we trailing the UK in business start-up and survival rates?

Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King brought down the curtain on 16 years of policymaking yesterday, and it was a subdued business-as-usual rather than any swansong pyrotechnics.

AS THE services industry makes up about 75 per cent of Britain’s economy, it is obviously good news that in May it grew at its fastest in over a year. But it is not just the sector’s expansion in every month of 2013 to date that is cheering.

SHOULD Royal Bank of Scotland be split up? The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards is expected to at least suggest this as an option for the bank in the next couple of weeks, though it appears the Treasury has little appetite for taking any action likely to require more time and cost in getting the bank back in private hands.

AS IF the disruption caused by the tramworks is not enough, a new battle is under way in Edinburgh over 
further upheaval.

WHAT is the state of Scotland? Over the past few months there have been growing signs of recovery.

THE hiring of a former spymaster to the board of HSBC is a sign of the times in more ways than one.

THE markets had a bout of dyspepsia this week caused by worries that the US Federal Reserve might be planning to rein back its monetary expansion programme, currently running at a staggering £55 billion a month.