While reforms dealing with the trading activities of banking firms have been recommended by the Vickers Commission in the United Kingdom and by the Liikanen Group in the European Union, neither of these approaches expressly prohibits a consolidated banking firm from engaging in proprietary trading.
Essentially, this protracted adjustment reflects the fact that national macroeconomic policies and structural reforms have not been  2  BIS Review 70/2009  ambitious enough to avoid the build-up of imbalances or to provide the economy with sufficient flexibility to deal with the necessary adjustment.