Category: Blog

Mrt Clegg will become famous for thinking the basic pension is just £30 a week. He can’t have been doing the shopping recently.

It is also time people realised that Mr Cable made an equally serious gaffe, showing he has little understanding of financial markets. He told us that Hedge Fund managers have made money out of shorting bank shares (probably true), made easier for them by the fact that taxpayers and governments underwrite the banks!

Could someone explain to Mr Cable that the last thing someone short of bank shares wants to happen is an announcement of official support for that bank. That puts the price of the shares up which means the Hedge Fund Managers shorting the shares lose money.

The meltdown in the markets yesterday saw investors give up on buying shares or anything risky. Wall Street plunged again. Fears are now swirling round yet more large financial institutions, just a day after the announced merger of HBOS and Lloyds. Only a few days have passed since Lehman sought bankruptcy protection before selling a big part of its business to Barclays and after Merrill Lynch announced merger plans.

At such times of crisis there is an understandable desire to blame someone, and a wish to find a simple solution. In this case the finger of blame is pointing at Hedge Fund Managers who have shorted bank shares, making money out of the misery. Mr Cable – and others in the UK – thinks the answer is to use regulatory means to stop Hedge funds and others selling shares they do not own.

If only it were that easy. Yesterday Wall Street financial stocks plunged despite tight rules on selling short. Such regulation has not stopped the problem in New York. The truth is many different people are selling, and many people and institutions are selling who do own the shares. No regulator can stop them doing that, sort of announcing that Stock markets have been abolished and everyone is now locked in to whatever they happen to be owning at the time.

This panic is not just the result of some smart operators exploiting bad news and fear. It the result of a deep inner uncertainty that has gripped the world’s markets. Individuals are selling small holdings in savings schemes, some pension funds are cutting their losses, many people are holding off buying to see what happens next. Banks and other financial institutions do not want to deal with each other and prefer financial assets with governments underwriting them.

Just as a few weeks ago at the top of the oil market I wrote that in some senses many people were oil speculators then, so today in some sense the many are selling the share markets or failing to support them now. There has been a huge lurch from fear of shortage of commodities to fear of losses in shares and other financial instruments. The more the markets fall, the more the fear spreads.

So what might help to stabilise the position? In the UK the Conservative proposal to rush through a better deposit compensation scheme would help. If most people knew their money was safe there would be no need to fear a run on any bank.

Offering more cash to the banking system to keep them more liquid is necessary. I am glad the UK authorities are joining in today in a concerted effort by Central Banks to do this.

Facilitating the takeover of weaker or exposed institutions by stronger may sometimes be a regrettable necessity. It weakens markets in the longer term, reducing competition and its benign effects, but can be a lesser evil than another institution going under or being nationalised.

Listening to the Chancellor this morning, I just wished he had shown the present degree of commitment to dealing with the problems in the money markets 13 months ago when some of us first sought aciton from the authorities to prevent a run on Northern Rock. If he had done then what he is doing now, he could have prevented the Rock disaster. Our banking system is weaker for having Rock in public ownership, unable to offer new loans and forced to halve its size.

The big increase in the dole queues today should provide more evidence to all those who think our problem is inflation that our problem is now the downturn.

When are the authorities going to realise they need to do much more to limit the damage and to prepare for the eventual turnround?

It is good today to welcome more campaigners to get the Uk building some power stations to keep the lights on.
In Crumbling Britain on 5th and 6th August I summarised the case for investing in new energy facilities on this blogsite. The download “Freeing Britain to Compete”, the Conservative Economic Policy document, also states the case at greater length.
Not only do we need the power, but we need the construction jobs. So come on government, get on with giving the permissions for the private sector to do the job.

When George Bush emerged from domestic shadows to appear as a serious challenger for power on the Federal and world stage, he was marketed as a caring Conservative. I remember my colleagues studying what he said, as the cross Atlantic bridge between conservative parties reflected on how to “decontaminate their brands” . The phrase used to annoy me. A party should not be a brand but an alliance of people with passions about how to improve their countries. The ideas of personal freedom and responsibility were not contaminated – it was just that on both sides of the Atlantic conservatives in power had made mistakes which had lost them office. In the US a Republican President had failed to cut taxes as promised, and in the UK a Conservative governemt had put them up when people were hard up.

Bush’s words implied that his Presidency would concentrate on domestic issues, and would show how conservative philosophy in action could help the jobless, the poorly educated, the less prosperous district. That part of his message sounded like my kind of conservatism.

Eight years on we see just how buffeted by events the Presidency has become. The so called war on terror has diverted much of the energy and taken many resources, as well as costing America many lives of her young soldiers. The poor regulation of financial markets and the easy money years of Fed expansion have led the administration into three of the largest nationalisations in history within the same month.

Listening to Obama, under the pressure of the campaign he has become a warrior against terror in the Bush way. He seems happy with the idea of more nationalisation and regulation to tackle the Wall Street storm.

Political parties and leading political figures today look powerless before the force of events. None of the main contenders are engaging with the big issues of the threat of recession or the banking crisis.

Spare us the lectures to be united at a time of national crisis, Prime Minister. Weak leaders make speeches about loyalty, and the need for discipline. Strong leaders listen to intelligent criticism or ideas about better ways of handling problems. Strong leaders unite enough followers by doing and saying the right things about the issues.Weak leaders create division by boring everyone with platitudes and silly spin.

We are still prisoners of Labour spin. It is amazing just how long a shelf life Nu Labour’s simple minded misconstruction of 1990s politics has enjoyed.

In the 1990s the Nu Labs told the media that a divided party could not govern, and was not electable. They told us the Major government would fall because it was divided.

They also told us an anti EU party could not be elected, and said the Tories problems came from being divided over the EU and for being too anti the EU.

Both these soundbites were wrong.

The Thatcher government was deeply divided, between wets and dries. Their arguments regularly appeared in the press, but it did not stop them winning 3 elections in a row. There were regular threats to Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, with Michael Heseltine wanting the job. The Thatcher governments wrestled with the big issues of the day – Trade Union power, poorly performing nationalised industries, high unemployment – and found contentious but lasting solutions.

The Blair government was deeply divided at the top. The press was full of stories of rows and splits between Blair and Brown, but it did not stop them winning 3 elections in a row. There were pressures for a leadership change, with Brown seeking promotion.

Governing parties are usually divided, and some healthy debate about the way ahead can be helpful, as long as the Leader communicates a strong sense of direction at the same time as allowing the public debates about it.

The polling throughout the Conservative years showed that Euroscepticism was always more popular than Euroenthusiasm. Indeed, at the nadir of Conservative polling fortunes it was only our Euroscepticism that was popular. Under William Hague we won the European election where we were able to express our scepticism.

The Conservative government fell for one main reason – it adopted the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on the advice of the other two parties and the CBI, and it proved to be a very damaging economic policy. In that sense it was Europe that destroyed the Conservative party in the 1990s – because it was too European, not because it was too sceptical.

If the Labour government falls, it will fall for one main reason – the poor economic policy it has followed, and the way it has made the Credit Crunch worse in the UK.
Its enthusiasm for all EU bureaucracy is a further irritant. Far from helping an unpopular government, its love of the Lisbon treaty and its refusal to honour its promise of a referendum has made it worse.

I am fed up with all the interviewers challenging Labour rebels with the nonsense that they are making the problem worse by daring to want a debate and a change of leadership. They are not the problem. The problem is the government and its policies. The interviewers should start asking the rebels instead, what they would do to make things better., That’s what the public wants to know.

The depressing thing about the Labour rebels is not that they are showing some life at a time when the government is performing badly, but that they are not yet offering an alternative strategy that makes sense and might ameliorate the economic crisis.

The failure of Lehman surprised the markets more than it should have, and left many investors nervous about bank shares and much else.

It followed hard on the heels of the nationalisation of Freddie and Fannie, and should be seen as part of the US Treasury Secretary’s strategy to get the western economies and the banking system through the troubles of the credit bubble.

The US authorities have always been sharper and more realistic about the aftermath of the bubble than the other jurisdictions of the world. They were the first to cut interest rates, the first to lend big money to ailing institutions and the first to use a tax cutting package to stimulate demand.

Many see this as primarily a US problem, with its origins in the US housing market and the sub prime crisis. It is true that the US has a big and bad version of the problem, true that the US has many of the largest financial companies that did well out of the credit boom, and was the first into the downturn. The reason markets fell around the world, is the realisation that this is not just a US problem, but a global one.

Big banks from the EU and Asia as well as the USA increased their lending and ballooned their activities in a similar way. Bankers around the world lent money to people who will find it difficult to repay in these more hostile conditions – for residential homes in Spain and the UK, for highly indebted businesses the world over, for expensively valued commercial property in a variety of jurisdictions. Banks worldwide bought as well as sold the new highly leveraged products of the Credit Boom era. When one of the big players like Lehman goes down, there are understandable fears about losses around the world from banks and financial companies trading with them, who also own similar pieces of paper to Lehman.

The Treasury Secretary seems to have decided that he will use the huge resources of the US taxpayer to stabilise the US front line large banks serving the general public, and to try to breathe some life into the mortgage market. He has rightly decided that even the long pocket of Uncle Sam cannot credibly underpin the whole shaky edifice of post bubble finance. He has concluded that it is safe to let a large financial institution like Lehmans file for bankruptcy protection, speeding up the revaluation of the complex financial instruments that made its fortune on the way up and proved its ruin on the way down. He understands that a lot of wealth has been destroyed and the system has to adjust to that. He is trying to work out which institutions are too important to the system to be allowed to go under. He shows a certain political understanding in an election year that using taxpayers money to put some floor under US house prices is the best combination of political shrewdness and help to the overall banking system.

Will it work? Let’s hope so. The Treasury Secretary is the most important person in the economic and financial world today. The Fed is taking a backseat, and the President is delegating it to an old wall Street pro. The other governments and Central Banks are bystanders, watching as the world’s biggest economy throws its might behind some of the shaky parts of the financial structure, and allows controlled demolition of other parts. It is the best strategy we have got, and we are not in a position to force another one. It would be wrong to let everything shaky collapse at the same time, and folly to suppose the US taxpayer can prop everything up as if nothing had happened. It does look as if the US are aware of the dangers, the complexities and the size of the task. It is clear they are learning on the job and are prepared to be flexible, as no-one has been here before. This crisis is on a different scale to other credit bubbles post 1945. We will find out in the days ahead if the line between institutions to be saved and institutions to be left to their own devices has been drawn sensibly. It is a line which may be redrawn by events.

Amongst the politicians it is popular to blame greedy bankers. Jealousy is a powerful political emotion. The fabulous incomes of some “bankers” in recent years is an easy target. No doubt we could all point to a few greedy bankers or dealers, just as no doubt there are a few greedy footballers. What really annoys people who watch the gyrations of the markets from afar is just how much money the system allowed its practitioners to make, only to discover that the business they were doing was not stable. The politicians on both sides of the Atlantic will blame the bankers and then demand more or different regulation, not pausing to reflect on the irony that this was the most regulated of industries, where many of the schemes and money making practises were devised to stay within the complex rules the regulators had imposed.
Mc Cain and Obama are united once again, this time in condemning Wall Street and its excesses, and demanding unspecified changes to the regulatory structure. They both must be hoping that the Bush men have bottomed this crisis by the end of the year.

The mood seems to be inclining to require a return to “traditional” banking, where more of the advances made stay on the balance sheet of the bank making the loan. This will reduce the total amount of credit that can be extended, and cut out the employment of many of those who made a great living out of creating , trading and investing in packages of loans made by the banks. Allowing Lehman to go under implies the authorities do not value the clever work of the intermediaries and professional market makers. When it comes to lending people a mortgage, they do want to stand behind Fannie and Freddie and help them in the short term make more loans available to customers.

This distinction seems popular and fair until you look a little more closely at it. On both sides of the Atlantic many more people got mortgages only because there were clever intermediaries and professional traders prepared to package loans and take them off the books of a Northern Rock or a Freddie and Fannie. If some or all of this comes to an end there will be further falls in house prices, which in turn undermines the favoured banks as well as the smart dealers and intermediaries. It is all more joined up and complex than some reformers would like.

The US authorities could also cut interest rates. Rates in the market have shot up as banks and others react badly to the news of real risk in lending and trading with other financial institutions. This would be a good moment to cut the Fed rate. There is no danger of inflation taking off or of too much credit in this environment!

The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (MPC) failed to control inflation on the way up, allowing interest rates that were too low for too long. The Uk made its own contribution to the world credit bubble, and has its own high inflation as a result. Expect more bad figures today.
Now the MPC is determined to get it wrong the other way, keeping rates far too high for too long. They can’t stop inflation rising this year by keeping rates up – they caused the inflation by errors in previous years. What they can do is to start ameliorating the downturn. Instead, the MPC seem determined to make it as bad as possible.

In recent weeks we have seen

Oil prices fall by one third!
House prices continue to fall – now down by more than a tenth in a year
Commercial property prices fall by one fifth in a year
Share prices falls by more than one quarter from peaks
Northern Rock and Lehman have crashed
Some other banks and financial institutions are in a difficult situaiton, strapped for cash

How much more deflation will it take before the MPC can get the message? INTEREST RATES ARE FAR TOO HIGH. THE ECONOMY IS BEING THROTTLED.

The MPC should wake up, meet in emergency session, and announce a reduction in interest rates to 3% in the first instance.

The markets are in a very fragile state. The US has cut interest rates to 2% only, and may take them down further. Why is the UK out to lunch in the middle of this nasty financial crisis? Why are they always looking backwards to past mistakes, instead of seeing that inflaiton will fall sharply next year, along with economic activity.

They seem to want more people to lose their jobs, more people to lose their homes, and more people to lose their businesses. Can someone tell me why?

At the same time the UK governemnt should publish a new and sensible forecast for its own spending and borrowing this year and next, and take action to cotnrol its ballooning deficit.

I am publishing later this morning some delayed government answers to questions I tabled when we last had a Parliament in this country, which show a jump in the numbers taking early retirement from different government departments.

It reminded me that in some cases now we have pay three times over for our government. We pay the pension of the person who used to do the job but left it early. We pay the salary of the person who takes over the job. And we pay the consultant they hire to actually do the work.

In some cases people are seriously ill and of course they should be granted early retirement. In other cases, they are clearly not. There has been a surge in these early retirement grants. As most of the pensions are unfunded or underfunded, there is an immediate extra drain on taxpayers.

No wonder we have such a large deficit.

We learn this morning that Lehman is filing for protection from creditors whilst it seeks to sell assets to sort out its financial problems. Markets are falling on the news ,as on this occasion the US authorities have not offered to rescue it directly.

I am not surprised they have declined to put up the money. There have to be limits on how much the US taxpayer can support. The massive rescues of Fannie and Freddie stretch even the long pockets of Uncle Sam.(See September 8th post).The decision on Lehmans in that sense is doubly good news. It will force the private sector to accept more of its own risks and not to expect a bail out in every case. It will also provide some much needed relief to the escalation of risk for taxpayers.

At the same time the US authorities are all too well aware of the possibility that the Lehman collapse could place strains on other financial institutions who have relied on doing business with Lehmans or have similar “assets” on their balance sheets that may need writing down as a result. So the US authorities are making yet more liquidity available to the system.

Maybe they have also encouraged the larger private banks to make available their own facility to help financial companies in trouble, which is being announced today. We are also likely to hear of the takeover of Merrill Lynch. It looks as if there is a massive amount going on behind the scenes in the USA to try to bottom this banking crisis and establish a new pattern of ownership, finance and values of financial instruments that might prove stable.

The US authorities remain alert and active, whilst the UK authorities remain sleepy and inactive. The CBI have revised their forecast for the UK economy to show a recession in the second half of this year, and practically no growth next. That must mean at least another £15 billion of government borrowing in each year, to add to the massive total the government has already committed. The UK financial positon is still deteriorating fast. The government refuses to produce its own new forecast, so it looks increasingly out of touch and behind the plot. Every knows its forecatss are wildly optimstic, so why not change them and try to look as if they want to manage events rather than be managed by them?