The blog has sometimes despaired of the cheer-leading and wishful thinking of too many leading policy-makers. As I argued in the Financial Times in March 2007, before the Crisis began, “they seem to confuse being market-friendly with being friendly to markets“. It therefore welcomes the realism being shown by the UK’s new coalition government. Today, […]
Chemicals and the Economy
“Nobody there” at the US Treasury
The UK’s most senior civil servant, Sir Gus O’Donnell said yesterday that the UK government was struggling to organise next month’s G-20 meeting because of the “absolute madness” of the US system, whereby “a new administration had to hire new officials from scratch, leaving a decision-making vacuum”. O’Donnell added that “there is nobody there. You […]
UK part-nationalises its major banks
The UK is to invest £50bn ($85bn) to rescue its major banks, via part-nationalisation. In addition, it will provide unlimited amounts of cash via loans. The aim is to try and unfreeze the UK’s banking system, which has been on the verge of collapse. Unlike the USA, there is no disagreement amongst the major parties […]
UK’s largest mortgage lender rescued
Another day, another rescue. This time on the other side of the Atlantic. HBOS, the UK’s largest mortgage lender, with a 20% market share, announced this morning that it was being rescued via a merger with the Lloyds TSB bank. The deal was brokered by the UK government. UK Finance Minister, Alastair Darling, told the […]
UK government expects house price falls
Yesterday the UK public had a rare view of what the government really thinks about future house price trends. Photographers snapped Housing Minister Caroline Flint arriving for a Cabinet meeting. And then journalists went to work on reading the notes in her hand. Contrary to official statements, it seems that the government expects ‘sizeable falls […]
UK nationalises Northern Rock
The UK government has today nationalised the country’s 8th largest bank, responsible for 18.9% of UK mortgage lending. You may remember that Northern Rock was an immediate victim of the US subprime crisis. Its funding model, based on securitisation, failed to work once lenders became more concerned about return of capital than return on capital. […]
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