Amnesty International, Death Penalty News, AI Index ACT 53 005 1999 (December 1999).

Well, you check memory very briefly, make a quick scan, and it's awfully easy to say to yourself, Ring, Rang, Rung, and very hard to say to yourself, Pare, Park they come more slowly.

In June 2002, in Ring v. Arizona the United States Supreme Court held that death sentences in five states imposed by a decision of a judge rather than a decision reached by a jury violated the constitutional right to trial by jury, thus reversing until a new trial is held the death sentences that had been imposed on about 800 prisoners.

Until last year, policymakers could always produce a new rabbit from their hat to reflate asset prices and trigger economic recovery. Fiscal stimulus, near zero interest rates, two rounds of quantitative easing, ring fencing of bad debt, and trillions of dollars in bailouts and liquidity provision for banks and financial institutions officials tried them all.

A commission headed by Sir John Vickers, the Oxford economist and former Bank of England chief economist, wants banks retail operations to be ring fenced from riskier trading and investment banking businesses. Ring fencing is not exactly Glass Steagall style separation Glass Steagall forbade commercial banks from even affiliating with investment banks but it is in the same spirit.

The Volcker rule, whereby commercial banks would be barred from trading on their own account, and from owning hedge funds and private equity firms, languishes in Congress. In the UK, an Independent Commission on Banking, headed by Sir John Vickers, rejected separation of retail from investment banking, recommending instead ring fencing deposits from the investment arms of universal banks.