Tim Worstall This is absurd! So the bankers whose excesses helped land Europe in this mess then get to sit round the big EU table, like any other government, and decide who should pay for it. And the answer, unsurprisingly, is: not them. The bigger question is: why finance has been granted such power? This  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall Having mutuals in the banking system might be a good idea for all sorts of reasons. But not perhaps for the reason that so many here claim. Which is, of course, that mutuals wouldn’t have gone so gung ho into excessive housing finance and thus wouldn’t have pumped up the bubble that led  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall Fred Goodwin is shredded: former RBS boss stripped of knighthood… Fred Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood after a political campaign to see the former head of Royal Bank of Scotland punished for his role in the financial crisis.   Oh dear. Time was, as a country, we respected the rules. Whatever  [ Read More ]

Douglas Carswell Central banks around the world, led by the US Fed, have increased liquidity with lots of cheap cash for big banks, the headlines told us last morning. One or two pundits have even implied that this will avert the next episode in the West’s unfolding financial drama. But hold on a second. What  [ Read More ]

Douglas Carswell Remember when the government spent £billions bailing out the banks? Not to worry, we were told. The taxpayer stands to make a profit out of it all. That was pretty much what the experts said when they nationalised key industries after the second world war, too, apparently. It turned out to be nonsense  [ Read More ]

John Redwood The UK political classes have been mesmerised by the Murdoch saga. The all party agreement to the motion to ask Mr Murdoch to withdraw his bid duly led him to do so. Meanwhile, outside the pressurised atmosphere of the debating chamber, the EU’s power brokers are locked in battle with each other, and  [ Read More ]