How important were all those initiatives the government kept announcing?

occasional ranter

"Spinned" ?!

Sally Chatterjee

The French call it "l'effet d'annonce", the power of announcement if you like. The policy doesn't matter, it's press release and headline that matters for Brown and the increasingly decrepid Treasury.

ken from glos

As usual with Labour it is Government by 'Bovine Scatology'
Simples.

merlin

spun

TrevorsDen

El Bruno is not err... picking his nose in your picture is he?

Just an illusion (appropriately) I am sure - can't think where I would have got the idea from.

mitch

Along with the 6 people they helped to stay in their homes when they couldn't pay the mortgage they are really doing a lot.

Andy Leeds

What a surprise.

Austin Barry

The paradox of this hyper-kinetic government is that for all its daily initiatives, announcements and schemes it just continues to erode in an agitated political entropy. And in the middle of the rank detritus squats Brown, like the Mekon, not quite dead but trapped beyond the event horizon, impotent and in despair, his huge implacable head the personification of misery.

Cardinal Richelieu's mole

Although mitch (above) says "Along with the 6 people they helped to stay in their homes when they couldn't pay the mortgage they are really doing a lot" this is a clear case of help for the "many not the few"!

Note "many" is not a majority, or even most, just more than a few - which would in turn be more than a "couple" - so 6 is "many" in Brownie speak!

Ian Walker

Don't forget the single family of failed asylum seekers they managed to repatriate.

logdon

Still at it, I see. From the Indy site today.

David Cameron=Mr 10% less
Less police, less safe, more cutsAsk Cameron what more cuts he wants
Labour.org.uk/Mr_10_Per_Cent

Denis Cooper

I read this in the Sunday Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/5743307/UK-Financial-Investments-warns-there-will-be-no-quick-sale-of-RBS-and-Lloyds-shares.html

"Lloyds is closing in on a deal with the Treasury to sign off its participation in the Asset Protection Scheme, but the complexity of the loan portfolios submitted by RBS means it is unlikely to strike its own agreement with the Government for several months."

and I had to read it again before finally concluding that it's taken all this time just to agree the details.

Treasury press release, March 7th:

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_23_09.htm

"The Government is today announcing an agreement in principle with Lloyds Banking Group (Lloyds) to participate in the Asset Protection Scheme."

"Under the agreement Lloyds will place £260bn of assets into the Asset Protection Scheme, focusing on those assets where there is the greatest degree of uncertainty about their future performance."

"3. Implementation of the Asset Protection Scheme will be subject to further due diligence by the Treasury and its advisers, execution of legally binding documentation, satisfaction of the application criteria and asset eligibility criteria of the Scheme, and satisfaction of applicable conditions precedent to accession to the Scheme including regulatory, state aid and shareholder approvals."

Four months later, and that process is nearly complete for Lloyds, but not for RBS even though it started slightly earlier.

So what exactly has been achieved over those four months? As I understand the banks still hold all or most of the "toxic assets" they held in March, contaminating their balance sheets and inhibiting their lending; all that has happened is that they and the Treasury have nearly worked out the detailed terms under which Darling will insure the value of those "toxic assets", at massive risk to the taxpayer.

Maybe I've got this completely wrong, but it seems to me that:

a) If it's possible to work out a value for an asset which the government is prepared to GUARANTEE so that the bank can sell it to another private investor for cash, then it's also possible to work out a provisional price at which a government body will BUY that asset for cash and get it off the bank's balance sheet, a price subject to rectification when the government body later sells it to a private investor; and

b) As the Bank of England has created £100 billion of new money to buy high-quality, easily marketable assets - gilts - then it could also have created £100 billion to gradually buy "toxic assets" from the banks as their values were worked out, and by now the banks could have been cleansed of a large chunk of them and could be back on their way back to normal business.

Sterence

I'm distressed that the Trading Floor part of the site seems moribund - one post per week/fortnight? It doesn't seem to me that the issues in the markets have gone away.

Ean Craigie

Sorry but spinned no spun is all I can remember spinned

Frank

"Span" as in "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" (Wiki checked, I'm ashamed to say)

Puzzled Me

So nothing has happened or has been worth commenting on since 6th July 2009?

Fergus Pickering

Not at all important, sport.In fact nothing that they say or dohas any importance at all.

Derbyshire Ben

What's happened to the Trading Floor... the FTSE is gaining, oil prices up, stories about Bruin ignoring the hedgies. C'mon speccie... get with it

StevenAdams

The FTSE has gained, but it's merely trending. A ceiling will soon be reached, it'll bound downwards and will likely trend sideways for sometime until the intl economy finds footing.