Monthly Archives: February 2009

Today we are back to playing the absurd media/government/Lib Dem game of threatening nationalisation if a bank share price goes down too far, only to see the share price go down because investors fear nationalisation. Why can’t they all understand that a falling bank share price is no crisis unless they make it one. If [...]

Here on this site: 27th September 2008 “Nationalisation is the worst option….By all means strengthen deposit protection. By all means act behind the scenes to help a private sector solution, but do not promise to buy it or take it over” November 4th 2008: “It’s great news that another group want second thoughts on this [...]

I have been asked to sum up the mood of the bloggers. I think it is quite like the mood of the students I met at Oxford last week as well. There is a new seriousness. The many who found economics dull are now straining to understand what is happening and are hungry for more [...]

When I heard the BBC tell me this morning that the CBI had called for £100 billion extra public spending in order to prevent a deeper recession I was ready to blog about the CBI’s economic illiteracy. When I read their Press Release I was interested to see the CBI said no such thing. They [...]

We are stuck in slumpflation. It is time for some commonsense amidst all this bank nationalisation madness. We need some hard truths for hard times. This crisis began because the UK had borrowed far too much. You do not get out of a debt crisis by borrowing more. You get out of it by paying [...]

Alan Greenspan became a popular figure. Everytime there was the threat of a downturn or a suggestion the US should draw in its belt, he slashed interest rates, created more money and allowed the good times to go on rolling. More recently he has become less popular. His successor, fighting to deflate the bubble his [...]

The pound has just halved against the yen, so the government proposes buying a huge number of new coaches and locos from Japan at a very high price with little UK manufacturing offset. When will they ever learn? The Unions are rightfully up in arms about it. The Opposition has to say it is the [...]

Not long after we get confirmation that all £20 billion taxpayers put into RBS has been lost in the write offs and trading losses at the end of last year, we hear that HBOS has lost £10 billion. There’s not much left then of the £37 billion we put in so recently to the three [...]

Last night the Oxford Union debated the motion “ This House blames the bankers”. Months ago in a moment of weakness I had agreed to speak against the motion. By yesterday, steeped in the theatre of the Westminster Show trials of bankers, and fresh from the hothouse atmosphere of the Commons smelling blood in the [...]