Monthly Archives: January 2009

I wish President Obama well. His journey from Chicago to Washington is a great acheivement which has generated him huge good will. I remember when I first praised his ability to shape a new language and style of politics and to build a coalition of support eyebrows were raised by Conservatives. This was long before [...]

The dreadful results from RBS more than confirmed the analysts forecasts of huge losses that I have been running on this site for sometime. As feared, RBS has lost more than the £20 billion of capital the government put in just a few weeks ago. It opens up the question again Why on earth didn’t [...]

I was the only MP to tell the Commons I thought the share purchases in banks were an expensive mistake and were unlikely to solve the Credit Crunch. I went on to explain how the banks could be kept going with less taxpayer money at less taxpayer risk. The government seemed unaware when it nationalised [...]

What should we do with RBS, now we are all enforced owners? RBS is too big for the taxpayer to stand behind. The bank made a foolish acquisition of ABN Amro near the top of the market which stretched it too far. It is now being made to repair its capital ratios, against a backdrop [...]

We seem to have seen off the Bad Bank idea. Instead, as the papers reveal, we will end up with an “insurance scheme”. it will be very difficult to get it right. Either the taxpayer is going to be made to pay huge losses in due course, or the banks will be weakened further by [...]

Constructing a Bad Bank to solve the Credit Crunch problem is too difficult in the current volatile situation. It would be quite wrong to force independent banks into one if they are not in receipt of taxpayer share capital.The main banks headquartered in the UK are too big to be taken on by the taxpayer. [...]

We are living through two crises, for the price of three, thanks to the authorities. The first crisis was the massive overextension of borrowing in the Credit bubble, which low interest rates and loose banking regulation, off balance sheet financing and a culture of buy now pay later fuelled in the early years of this [...]

I have always said the civil service would work better if it was slimmed down. I have favoured natural wastage, to reduce it by around one fifth in a full Parliament, with no compulsory redundancies and no redundancy payments for the poor old taxpayer to meet. My experience as a Minister was we had more [...]

I still meet Conservatives who say they would like Ken Clarke to replace George Osborne as Shadow Chancellor. How foolish they are. Peter Mandelson would like nothing better. The Labour spin machine is trying to sow discord in Tory ranks. Let me give Conseravtives two solid reasons why we should not replace George with Ken. [...]

The Opposition will continue to remind people of the insensitive remarks of Baroness Vadera, claiming to see the green shoots of recovery on the worst day of the recession so far, when more than 5000 jobs were lost. Words are cheap, and on this occasion make no difference to the underlying reality. Her offence is [...]