Brown is trying to deflect blame onto the bankers

Bocephus

"He's paid good money for the privilege"

Now that he is forcing banks to buy billions of pounds of government bonds so that he can buy stakes in the banks, it would appear he has bought the bank shares with money he borrowed from the banks in the first place, and what makes it even better is the only way the banks could afford to lend him the money was by him giving them the money to lend him. Does this make sense.

Talk about a dog chasing its tail.

mitch

Now they want to remove the need for the BOE to report its position every week see Guidos blog.
Let the presses roll!

Short the UK

I picked up this snippet today:

"Norbert Walter, chief economist of Deutsche Bank claims that German GDP could fall as much as 4% next year.

Considering there has not been a year in the last 59 years with worse growth than 1%, Walter’s forecast, if proven out, would spell disaster."

What does this mean for UK plc, how far could our GDP fall?

kinglear

Our GDP could quite easily fall 10% - don't forget the City won't be earning very much, or even anything, in 2009.
It's going to get VERY nasty

Lance Grundy

The Conservatives should be doing their utmost to push Labour into a confrontation with the banks. It makes political sense to have the Labour Party spending its time fighting battles it cannot win.

People don’t like the fact that the banks got billions and billions of pounds of taxpayers money to stop them failing. It was a bitter pill for the electorate to swallow. Brown sweetened the pill by telling us that the bail-out would help small businesses and hard-working families get through difficult times. It would lesson the effects of the recession. It hasn‘t and, rightly or wrongly, people‘s perception is that the banks have just taken the money and run. Brown has given the banks a free lunch with our dinner money. The Tories need to hold him to account. Where is the bang for our buck?

The idea of Brown’s Labour Party engaged in the mother of all battles with Britain’s banks delights me. A fight to the death. Think Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at each other’s throats. The banks will win. Labour will lose - and exhaust itself in the process. The rest of us can watch. As for the banks, they’re big enough to look after themselves. If the worst comes to the worst we can always pick up the pieces later. For now we just need to encourage them to turn on Labour and bite off the hand that ’fed’ them.

WINSTON PLACE

Come on Gordon leave the executives to run te banks that is what they get paid for.
Concentrate on the XFACTOR instead.

Short the UK

It is Armageddon.

I hope the Tories do not join Brown in a government of National Unity. They must let the man hang. Only join if he is deposed.

This is Armageddon.

Sally Chatterjee

An excellent piece explaining the issue Fraser. I don't want to brownnose. I doubt the banks can make the case so succinctly, for their PR departments are wary to cross Downing Street and the likes of Mandelson.

jim

The death of a currency is never pretty, millions of people are about to lose their life savings. It really has become a madhouse.

RODEST

There is another sinister ploy that may be given onsideration; Mighty Mouth Brown welomes the recession with open arms because history shows that poorer people have always voted Labour and the more of them there are the more likely Labour will win the next election.

Brown has no interest in people who have saved for their retirement or to improve their lives, for his own ego he needs to give the impression that he is the only one who is helping those who are worse off.

The next (goose) step is wearing jackboots and wearing arm bands to show loyalty to the party and saluting the image of Furher Brown on your PC every morning. Orders will be sent out to destroy books and magazines; hmmm, wonder which will be first.

TomTom

The banks will win. Labour will lose - and exhaust itself in the process. The rest of us can watch.

Yes, and international investors will be flockiing to invest in UK equities and bonds so they can be part of the great British Suicide Pact.

The largest part of the FTSE is banks and then oils - just why would anyone want to buy Gilts, Banks or Oils even without Labour and the Banks at loggerheads ?

hadrian

Of course a huge degree of impoverishment for many has been on the cards for some time; our government has been utterly profligate and the chickens are coming home to roost as Santamas approaches! Dobt the geese are going to get all that fat, this coming year!
As for the Banks telling like it is I thought there was one on national news doing a pretty good job this evening( on Channel Four News if memory serves me aright). Reality is setting in and all the political denials in the world will not make it avoidable.

Bexleyite

Gordon is a liar.

I don't know why Cameron isn't saying this.

I'm going to gold.

Bexleyite

Forgot one thing.

I'm going to gold before exchange controls are brought back.

Julio de Bavaar

British banks do not borrow every penny they lend. They only need to keep 10% of all loans as a deposit so they borrow 10p to loan out 90p. Money from thin air!

Ian C

It is Armageddon for the UK - it's the end of a period of Labour Gov't so it always is. Let's hope the country finally learns not to re-elect another one - ever.

But according to Lombard Street Research, Germany is well placed to cope and see recovery in 2nd half of 2009. Incidentally they think the US will be growing again by the same time, if slowly, as the savings rate is climbing rapidly - paid for by huge increases in disposable incomes from all the stimuli.

Here we have done very little because we can't. The PBR was pathetic (thank God because too much of the wrong medicine is worse than none) - yes its Armageddon, but only here, Icleand and Hungary etc!

Fill your boots with double digit yielding corporate and Loc Auth (mostly US) bonds and higher yielding international stocks and go and sit on a beach where tourists can't get to (Thailand maybe?) for two years!

JimBob

I've heard enough 'analysis' from the tories, how about some emotion? People are angry about the economy and Brown's lies but I don't see the tories showing they are. The tories should be getting in the face of labour - theres enough ammunition to keep the pressure on until the GE. This should be an open goal for DC - he might be a toff, but he does emotion and empathy so much better than Brown.

Victoria

Brown has allegedly dreamt of being Prime Minister since the age of 15. That said, does this in light of the current situation remind anybody else of a neo-British backdrop to Death of Salesman?

Please let's hope a snap election is called.

Mabs

I am a pensioner and have saved most of my working life to enable me to have an easier retirement without having to claim benefits. It makes me angry that a prat like Gordon Brown has ruined our economy whilst chancellor. Spent everything the conservatives saved and sold the rest cheap. The man is an utter idiot. Who in the world would take advice from him.Other leaders must laugh behind his back. Every other country will come out of this recession 2 years before us,and hopefully the foolish people who voted for this shower will see the error they made.

David Short

Yep, blame it all on Brown, forget about the greed of banks.

The Spectator, in its pursuit of Broon, perhaps at the behest of another Scot, a tired old Thatcherite, every week 'publishes' one of these Nelson diatribes, and by doing so drip by drip loses the credibility it gained as a wise political publication in the many decades prior to its current management and ownership.

Dr Rob Sindall

Brown has frozen deposits of the ex Derbyshire Building Society (IoM) to buy votes from IceSave and secure Bradford & Bingley (IoM) depositors. Such obbery is immoral and against all business ethics yet DC is quiet. Is he and the tories so far removed from ordinary savers asthis government/