Category Archives: Northern Rock

Readers of this site will know I have long been advocating that the Bank of England cuts interest rates and concentrates on fighting recession. Inflation will fall next year anyway. This has proved contentious with some of my readers. I ask them, how much more evidence do you need of slowdown, how much bigger a [...]

I heard this morning that UK house prices are now down by more than 10% so far this year. I listened in vain for a government Minister to come on to claim success from their policy. For years Ministers have told us we needed to make houses more affordable. They have become mighty shy now [...]

Today the government’s favourite think tank is being given air time to tell us how important migrants are to our economy. It is true that in the boom time migrants often came here to do jobs others were unwilling to do. The government made the labour market much less flexible for people born here, through [...]

Today we will hear a statement from the Chancellor announcing a much heralded statement offering up to £50 billion of near cash to the banks in return for some of their mortgages. How is this done? The government itself will borrow the money, by issuing bonds – IOUs – on the taxpayer.It will lend this [...]

THE £50 BILLION PACKAGE FOR THE BANKS WOULD HAVE SAVED NORTHERN ROCK IF INTRODUCED LAST AUTUMN. If the government and Bank of England can make £50 billion available to the banks today to get the mortgage market going again, why couldn’t they have done that last September to prevent the Northern Rock crisis? This latest [...]

Governments are changing their position over banking regulation. When the credit crunch first struck, they were cautious and said there was no point in seeking to bolt the stable door after the horse had gone. As banks were now trying to recover from a weak position and were risk averse there was no need to [...]

Today someone of the radio told us that the credit crunch was easing in the UK wholesale markets, and intensifying on the High Street. That’s what you should expect to happen. Banks and Building Societies are getting the message from the money markets that they cannot carry on lending so much. That’s why they are [...]

Just as we have seen a rush by mortgage companies to put their rates up, so they are not left as the cheapest on offer facing a deluge of applicants, so we are now seeing a rush to withdraw mortgage products altogether as mortgage companies struggle with the volume of demand. Individual companies are right [...]

Today a leading mortgage company has announced it is withdrawing for the time being from making any new mortgage advances. This follows hard on the heels of the government’s decision to halve the amount Northern Rock has lent on mortgage over the next couple of years in order to repay the money owing to taxpayers. [...]