“I’m trying to get the oil price down, and get the fall passed on directly to people at the petrol pumps and then on to gas and electricity bills.” PS I realise that I’m being a bit unfair to King Canute who was actually trying to demonstrate the limits of his powers to his followers.
Opinion is divided in Westminster between those who think that with the financial turmoil the political plates have shifted in Brown’s favour and those who believe that any bounce Brown is getting from this crisis will be temporary. I’m firmly in the latter camp and I’d say that Iain Martin has it exactly right in his Telegraph column this morning: “In the years ahead there will be unemployment, hardship and social dislocation. Borrowing will be higher, taxes will rocket, spending on services will fall, and it will have its origins not in the Thatcherite mid-1980s but in the past decade of the most reckless financial mismanagement. Labour over-spent, over-borrowed and
Unionists of course. That. at any rate, is Alan Cochrane’s argument in the Telegraph today. With his acknowledged acumen in this field, Mr Salmond has tried to put himself at the very epicentre of this crisis but with every day that passed he has looked more and more like a spear carrier in a major production being directed by people altogether more powerful than he. HBOS and RBS may have their brass plates in Scotland, but the measures needed to cope with the crises afflicting them required action on a scale far outwith the capabilities of one small nation. Mr Salmond’s actions have looked increasingly puny, revealed for what they
If Coffee Housers missed it, I’d thoroughly recommend watching Kirsty Wark’s interview of George Osborne on Newsnight. It could easily be mistaken for a parody of BBC bias. Wark starts off by suggesting that the Tory governments of the 1980s are to blame for the current crisis; even Gordon Brown hasn’t attempted to claim this. She then proceeds to be unable to understand why the Tories think differently about bankers’ bonuses now that they are being paid for with taxpayer money rather than bank profits. I’m normally reluctant to claim that the BBC is biased, much of its political coverage is excellent. But the contrast between the treatment that Osborne
A lot of people are opining that the Tories, as a party of a centre-right, are in trouble because of this financial metdown. Nicholas Watt says in The Guardian today that “[Cameron] faces the same questions being posed to all centre-right parties across the world – and which appear to be inflicting such damage on John McCain’s presidential ambitions. The Tories and the US Republicans are being asked what the champions of light regulation have to say after the spectacular failure of this approach.” While in the Mail Peter Oborne, one of the smartest people in journalism, writes that “The Tory Party has a desperate problem in the coming months –
Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Perry Mehrling have a fascinating opinion piece in today’s Washington Post arguing that we are actually all going to be fine and that the coming recession is going to be quite modest—at least in the US. Here’s the nub of their argument: “Uncle Sam (a.k.a. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke) is doing precisely what’s needed to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s. With credit markets drying up, he’s turning on the faucet by recycling our panic dollars back into the financial market. The government is taking in our money (in exchange for Treasury bills) and using it to make mortgages and buy
Lots of people are mocking the Tories for being concerned about bankers’ salaries; Simon Hoggart ribs Cameron for sounding like a Trot at PMQs yesterday. But the Tory position is actually entirely reasonable. As long as these banks were getting by without state aid it was up to them and their shareholders how much they paid their executives. But now that they are going to be taking public money, we as taxpayers have a legitimate interest in these decisions – a point made in the latest issue’s leader. It would be a sensible step if the government were to declare that a condition of any bank receiving public money would be
As Vince Cable pointed out yesterday, events sure are fast-moving. The latest is that over 20 councils have cash sunk in troubled Icelandic banks. And that’s aside from organisations such as Transport for London, which – according to Boris – has £40 million at stake here. Accordingly, the various heads of these local bodies are seeking to meet with the Treasury, to try and get assurances that their money will be safeguarded. It’s not looking too promising for them. In the Q&A session following his statement yesterday, Alistair Darling seemed to suggest that – in effect – councils should have known better. Problem is, council leaders are claiming that they followed Treasury advice
Robert Chote, the director of the IFS, does the invaluable job of totting up in today’s Telegraph just how much debt the country has racked up recently. “In September last year, public sector net debt stood at just under £515 billion or 36.8 per cent of national income. Since then, the nationalisation of Northern Rock has added a further £87 billion and the Government’s day-to-day borrowing another £30 billion. By August this year, net debt had reached £632 billion or 43.3 per cent of national income, roughly the level that Labour inherited from the Conservatives in 1997. To that total we will probably need to add another £40-50 billion for
Rod uses the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto to give Chesterton an airing. Grand stuff. But Mr Dreher also has this to say: Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, the 1571 grand naval battle that saved Europe from Ottoman Turkish conquest. The victory — one of the greatest ever in naval warfare — was credited by Pope Pius V to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who’d received countless rosaries in petition for the victory of Christian forces and the protection of Christian Europe from Islamic conquest. Today, then, is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary among Catholic Christians. Europe wouldn’t be free of
Well, campers, if it’s Wednesday you know it’s Disappointment Time. Yes, John McCain and Barack Obama are “debating” again tonight. This time in an all-holds barred “town hall” format. Can you contain your excitement? Well, for those of you who remain, despite all previous warnings to the contrary, demons for punishment, fret not we’ll be here too. That is to say that, against my better judgement, I’ll be live-blogging the nonsense again. What joy. Swing on by and stick around and treat yourself to a gimlet or something. What’s left to lose? We’ll be live in, like half an hour’s time…
There’s plenty one could say about National Review’s blog The Corner. If nothing else it affords a grim panorama of the decline of the American conservative movement. Decline, at least, in as much as NR is considered the house magazine for mainstream Republicanism. Here, for instance, is Andrew McCarthy on last night’s debate: Now, as the night went along, did you get the impression that Obama comes from the radical Left? Did you sense that he funded Leftist causes to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? Would you have guessed that he’s pals with a guy who brags about bombing the Pentagon? Would you have guessed that he
In an interview with Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian, Rowan Williams has a nice little dig at Dawkins – he’s calmly patronising, seemingly by accident. “As he escorts me from his study, he tells me he admires Dawkins. “There’s something about his swashbuckling side which is endearing.” He invited atheism’s high priest and his wife to a Lambeth Palace party last year. “They were absolutely delightful.” Again, classic Williams: the better man being nice about his foe…But the real reason the Dawkins were invited is unexpected. “My son wanted to meet Mrs Dawkins.” Why? “She was in Doctor Who.” Really? “Oh yes. She played an assistant when Tom Baker was
Westminster is convinced that Gordon Brown is the political beneficiary, at least in the short-term, of the current financial turmoil. Brown looks more energised and confident than he has in a long time, the rebellion within the Labour party has been quashed, and the Tories are in a bind. They have to be supportive of the government lest they be accused of playing politics with the situation but this leaves them looking like they have no ideas of their own as David Cameron found to his cost at PMQs. But the Populus poll in today’s Times, obviously taken before today’s bail-out, suggests that there is less of a Brown bounce
Today’s WSJ reports that almost one in six US homeowners now owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. 16 percent now do so compared to 4 percent in 2006. Among those who purchased their residence in the last five years, the figure rises to 29 percent. One wonders what the equivalent UK figures will look like by the turn of the year.
Had six central banks not agreed to cut interest rates by the same amount today –50bp – I suspect the Bank of England would have gone lower. We’re at 4.5% now but we’re probably on a downward track to 3.5% or even 3.25%. Great news if you’re on a variable mortgage anchored to the base rate, but we’ll see how the interbank rate reacts. There is still much we have to learn, including how this £50bn bank bailout will be financed. Darling’s Mais lecture is tonight (delayed from last night) where he’s likely to tell us about a new set of rules for the age of debt which will dominate the
We’ve uploaded a Web Exclusive report by Lloyd Evans on the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate: “Heathrow needs a third runway”. You can read it here.
On this morning’s Today Programme Alistair Darling came as close as I reckon he’ll ever come to setting out his stance on guaranteeing bank deposits. He said: “What we do in relation to that will differ from institution to institution…what I will do is in every single case and every single instance…I have been very clear I have never ruled anything out.” So finally an answer of sorts, and that answer is the Chancellor will play each ball as it lies. Basically this means our savings are safe but it’s just a question of who ends up being the guardian – be it a Spanish bank or the government itself.
As Kevin Rudd’s press gallery romance sours, Turnbull sharpens his knife Mr Rudd pursed. Mr Rudd rearranged his pencils, first by height, second by colour, third by the order in which they displeased him. Mr Rudd was out of sorts. His sermon to the UN, on the world’s crises, as they related to Mr Rudd, was not the pinnacle entered in his BlackBerry planner. If he held the General Assembly in the palm of his hand, it was because the audience could have fitted equally comfortably into a departing cab, which, during the course of his remarks, it did. To be fair, his triumph was programmed for the UN equivalent
Just as directors’ dealings often reveal more about the immediate outlook for their companies’ shares than can be gleaned from annual reports, it often makes sense to follow what fund managers do, rather than what they say. So it was a pleasant surprise over lunch the other day to find myself in step with one of the most successful investors alive in Britain today. Anthony Bolton, president of investments at Fidelity, the biggest unit trust manager in the world, is buying shares again, two years after he called the top of the bull market. This should give comfort — and pause for thought — to the herd who are dumping