Here’s a surprise. It’s all Maggie’s fault.
The pictures of Gordon Brown having tea with Lady Thatcher in Downing
Street in the middle of a bank run could hardly have been more
compromising. It was her philosophy that above any other has led us to
this pass.
I was looking for some sort of guide as to what should actually happen:
We need a solid, social democratic government to reduce the risk of
such recklessness in future, not tell us that finance should be left to
finance while the taxpayer picks up the pieces.
A social democratic government, eh? You mean a little more like Germany? You know, Rhineland capitalism…that’s what Will normally means when he says such things. Certainly, Germany has never had that dose of Thatcherism now, has it?
Gosh:
SachsenLB is the second German bank to be caught up in the subprime
turmoil which has hit stock markets across the world after the troubled
IKB, which was rescued with an 8.1 billion dollar liquidity line
extended by state-owned KfW, its main shareholder.
Wow:
The German bank Sachsen LB is the newest victim of the subprime turmoil
that has hit European commercial paper markets. The government-backed
German Savings Associations have provided a €17.3 billion credit line
for the investment fund called Ormond Quay belonging to Sachsen LB.
This is the third German bailout in three weeks.
So, from the available evidence. A social democratic system of bank regulation has seen three banks requiring salvaging because they have already lost money in these mortgage markets. They’ve been rescued at great cost to the taxpayers.
A more free market system has had one bank run, this brought on by the inability to roll over short term borrowings. No cost to the taxpayer (as yet. Given the interest being charged, likely a profit in fact). No losses as yet in fact. Just a credit crunch.
And our Will says that the second system is worse than the first and we should move from the second to the first. What excellent advice, eh? Guess that’s why they pay him the big bucks.
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