It was an enormous mistake to appoint Mark Carney as the Governor of the Bank of England. In a job that is supposed to be a-political, because the Bank of England is supposed to be independent, Carney has demonstrated a willingness to make political statements, endeavour to influence policy and now in what should be his last major speech, he's announced an astonishingly reformist policy shift in the weeks before his term comes to an end. All the fuss in the media this morning is about Facebook's Libra. However, there is something that has the potential to cause far more systemic problems than that.

In the North West of China, in the district of Inner Mongolia, a small private bank started to get into trouble. The warning signs, with hindsight, were apparent but it's a kind of problem that, while common in Russia a couple of decades ago, is not usual in China. The results, however, are predictable for both financial and cultural reasons.

It's not the best way to start the week, much less the month. The first notice from Australian regulator The Australian Securities and Investment Commission tells that Macquarie Securities (Australia) Limited has been issued a penalty notice : ASIC "believes" the company "contravened" market integrity rules. The failure was of design, implementation and maintenance of compliance systems, not an intention to not comply, ASIC says. Plus ça change in so much of the financial sector, then.

Tracing its heritage to 1787 (that's a year, not a time), Raphaels Bank is one of the oldest independent banks in the UK. The bank says "today, we operate as a dynamic, niche savings and lending bank." It also operates "our own ATM Estate" and says it's a "well-established payment services provider." That, it is hard to escape concluding, is that this venerable institution is capitalising on its size and ability to operate in areas more usually associated with secondary institutiond and fintech companies. But for such a tiny business, it comes to the attention of regulators more than is healthy.