Martin Wolf’s column in the FT this morning well-worth reading, one statistic in it really does bring home the problem of over-leveraging: “the gross liabilities of the US financial sector have soared from just 21 per cent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 116 per cent in 2007.”
The Senate is expected to vote on a mildly revised version of the bailout proposal sometime today. The bill will include tax breaks for both businesses and people designed to help the bill garner more support in the House when it returns there. With both Obama and McCain backing the bill as well as the leaderships of both parties, the plan should pass the Senate comfortably.
The US Treasury chief sees his interventionism as a case-by-case response to unprecedented events, says James Doran, but his critics see it as inconsistent, dangerous and ‘un-American’ It’s hard to keep up with Hank Paulson, the grim-faced US Treasury Secretary and would-be architect of a new financial order. Over the past eight months, since the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns, Paulson has been confronted with an escalating crisis that has engulfed Wall Street, plunged markets into chaos, and threatened to push the global economy into deep recession. And at each milestone on the road to ruin, Paulson — Hermes-like — has presented a different face. When he accepted
Swearing and shouting are underrated, says Giles Coren. Four-letter words can be immensely satisfying and extraordinarily effective When I was ever so small and sweet, romper-suited and frilly-booted and really quite an angel to look at, I must have had a gob on me like an angry plasterer, because the only piece of advice I can remember my mother ever giving me is: ‘If you’ve got nothing nice to say, Giles, then keep your mouth shut.’ This was most often said at table, I think, when I was passing comment on the ickiness of the boil-in-the-bag cod mornay or the pooey colour of the butterscotch Angel Delight, perhaps on the
The Medjugorje story begins early in 1976 when a Franciscan monk in the former Yugoslavia, Father Tomislav Vlasic, starts an affair with a nun who becomes pregnant. Frightened he will be exposed as the child’s father, Father Vlasic persuades her to move away to Germany. She hopes he will honour his promise to leave the ministry and marry her. She writes a sequence of increasingly anxious letters when this does not happen, telling her former lover she is so miserable that she is praying she will die in childbirth. But he piously orders her to ‘be like Mary’ and accept her destiny in a foreign land — and never to
La Calisto Royal Opera House Tosca Opera North, Leeds It’s not often that you find the Royal Opera going as far back as the 17th century, no doubt for the good reason that operas written then are not suitable for performance in such large houses. That hasn’t daunted the director David Alden, who, together with his set designer Paul Steinberg, has located the action of Cavalli’s La Calisto in a grand hotel, with gods behaving badly in 1920s clothing. The era of the grand Art Deco hotel, with its atmosphere of illicit trysts and shady goings-on, is so potent that even when staying in a Travelodge I still have hopes
Churchill’s Wizards, by Nicholas Rankin Deception plays a large part in war, just as feinting plays a large part in sport. The British excel at it, and used it with much success in both the 20th century’s world wars, particularly in the second. That war’s conspiracy theorists are fond of suggesting even more deceptions than did in fact take place; luckily, there are now two sound history books by which they can be confuted. If a wartime deception is not mentioned either in Michael Howard’s Strategic Deception of 1990 or in Thaddeus Holt’s The Deceivers of 2004, it is hardly likely that it happened: useful sticks with which to beat
Radley Balko is right. If this story isn’t the sort of cheery goodness you’ve been craving in these troubling, turbulent times then, well, what the hell’s wrong with you? It’s the sort of tale that restores your faith in the power of free enterprise and, frankly, the United States of America. To wit: State attorneys say John LaVoie should be forever barred from the massage business because he ran a house of prostitution camouflaged as a church. But in his latest court argument, the Tucson man says he hired women at Angel’s Heaven Relaxation Spa — near University Medical Center — not to sell sex but to comfort the afflicted
I really don’t know enough to tell whether it was a good thing that the bailout plan failed yesterday or not. Mebbes aye, mebbes naw as a great man was fond of putting it. But the absurdity of a dozen Republicans changing their votes because wee Nancy Pelosi was mean about their daddy can only confirm the public’s low opinion of Congress and, in the end, damage the Republican “brand” still further.
A crisis presents politicians with an opportunity. But no politician on either side of the Atlantic has seized the one presented by the current financial turbulence. Gordon Brown is benefitting not from anything he has said or done but because he is ‘experienced’ and voters think that because he was Chancellor he must know the way home from here. David Cameron and George Osborne have made the right noises and struck the right tone. But as opposition politicians they are limited in what they can do. They also have not been ahead of the curve on this. In the US, Bush’s leadership has been pitiful, Hank Paulson has been politically
Amid all the justified clamour about the global financial crisis, let us not forget that (for instance) children will still have to be educated. So do read Michael Gove’s fine speech on his plans for a Swedish-style schools revolution, expanding on the themes he discussed in Fraser’s interview last week. As one Cameroon put it to me: ‘We can’t let the end of the world distract us from saving the nation’.
Currently, the markets seem to be holding up as well as could be expected. At the time of writing: — FTSE is at +0.44 percent — Dow Jones has opened around 2 percent up. — Nasdaq is at +2.48 — Dax is at -1.17 Perhaps the most significant financial indicator of the day is that Libor – the rate at which banks lend to each other – has risen to an all-time high. In other words, it’s more expensive than ever for banks to borrow from each other – increasing the chances that more of them will need bailing out.
There is talk coming out of Washington that the Senate will pass the bailout bill and send it back to the House, almost daring it to vote it down again. Speaking this morning, President Bush made it clear that he’s going to keep pushing for a bill, and enough House members might have been scared by yesterday’s fall on the Dow to get this passed second-time out.
We’ll be providing market updates here on Coffee House and Trading Floor today, as the financial turmoil continues. So, just to recap: — The Dow Jones index closed at -6.98 percent yesterday evening. — Nasdaq closed at -9.14. — The Nikkei index closed this moring at -4.12 — Hang Seng closed at +0.76 And so far today: — After an early plummet, the FTSE is hovering around the 0 percent mark. It’s currently at +0.17 percent. — Dax is at -0.98 Today’s biggest loser so far has been HBOS – at time of writing, shares in that company are down around 10 percent. As Paul Waugh points out, that could be causing a few headaches
There are few events that can break through the conference bubble but the failure of the $700bn bailout has undoubtedly been one of them. Most worryingly, no one knows what happens next. In Washington, the bailout seems doomed. It was never politically popular to begin with and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will want to cop the flak for passing it. It says something about President Bush’s lack of political authority these days that not only did House Republicans vote the bill down but only four of the Texas delegation voted for the bill. Indeed, politically it is hard to see what upside there is to voting for the
Questions abound after the financial panic yesterday, which saw the Dow Jones index experience its biggest-ever one-day fall and which has triggered similar drops in markets across the world. Will a(nother) bailout package be agreed upon in the US? How long might that take? Will more banks collapse? Have we seen worst of it? Only the last of these can be answered with anything like certainty, and the most persuasive answer to it is: No. Less significant, but floating around nonetheless, are the political questions. Who will benefit, and how? Another poll this morning suggests that Labour might be capitalising from the turmoil – not only does it record a
Via, Mr Eugenides, I see that, despite what you may think, it’s not all doom and gloom. Just occasionally good and wholesome news slips through the clouds, spreading sweetness and sunshine all around: Every person flying into Britain will be offered a free cup of tea and a biscuit in an ambitious, if eccentric, plan to make the country more cheerful. The hope is that tourists, and travellers returning from holidays, will be able to banish dark thoughts of a delayed flight, poor weather, and global financial meltdown if confronted with a free cup of English Breakfast tea and a plate of Jammie Dodgers. Apparently it’s an idea first proposed
The general consensus here is that the Osborne speech did the business: yet another hurdle has been cleared by the Tories. However, folk here are buzzing about tonight’s Dispatches programme on Tory funding. To my mind, the issue is not whether short sellers are donating to the Tories, but Lord Ashcroft’s tax status. It is a huge strategic liability–and one that a half competent Labour party would exploit–that the Tories cannot say whether one of their vice-chairmen and major donors is domiciled in this country for tax purposes. I know CoffeeHousers get irritated when the Aschroft issue is raised. But it is reckless for the Tories to let this
Dotted around this rabbit-warren of a convention centre are cut-outs of David Miliband based on that infamous photo of him posing with a banana. The Tories might now not to get to run against Miliband, but he has replaced Nick Clegg as the man they love to mock.
This was new, serious George. In a soberly-delivered speech, Osborne went a long way to reassuring voters that he is ready to be Chancellor. He stressed financial and fiscal responsibility and deftly threaded the political needle on criticising the excesses of the City without committing to more regulation. Osborne was so keen to demonstrate his seriousness that he kept his trademark smirk under wraps. He even bit his lip during one bout of applause in a seeming attempt to stop it from breaking through. The headline from the speech is a freeze on council tax for two years. This will be achieved by returning government advertising and consultancy budgets to
