Lots written today about the Bank of England not disclosing the size of the loans to the bust banks last year. Some truth in that they could perhaps have been fully open beforehand.However, the idea of a lender of last resort is that you take effective action and this is certainly one of the few times the Bank of England made the correct decision in the credit crunch.
Also, in its own way the Bank of England balance sheet, published weekly, made it quite clear huge sums were being lent, but not to whom. However, it was not rocket science to guess who was big enough and desperate enough to want the money; just check out the collapsing share prices of the biggest banks!
So all in all this is a bit of a storm in a teacup as I see it. If small shareholders in Lloyds think this is yet another aspect of deception then so be it; why don;t they campaign for Eric Daniels to go, he after all is the remaining architect of the deal?
11 comments:
Wrong.
Yes, if Daniels was in on the scam then he must go - too. But scam it was: keeping the share price artificially low thus keeping the deal sweet. That's about as illigal in trading as you can get - and only an organisation with the muscle of a national (corrupt, Brownite, Labour) government could have pulled it off on that scale - and would have even tried to.
I wonder how many Labour ministers, who were, you know, tipped off and therefore "in the know" (wink wink) about the real state of HBOS's solvency and, consequently, real value, made a little bit of a quiet side bet - and then a major league hunk of cash to see them through their imminent (enforced) retirement/unemployment.
I'll bet you £62Bn at least one of those assholes has coined it as a consequence.
But I guess we'll never know, so you're safe (unlike the British public).
You get my point (I hope).
My thoughts exactly, they are running out of 'shock horror' credit crunch/banking news and lazy hacks are just recycling old stories.
I expect this trend to continue.
Good point about the BoE balance sheet: we knew something was going on. But why could they not just be transparent?
Companies and the auditors are obliged to state what they know in shareholder circulars.
You could argue that transparency would have told the markets that HBOS wasn't going under and would have calmed the media and short sellers alike.
Nice to see Mervyn King take aim at Brown and Darling again this morning for not reducing the deficit anywhere near fast enough.
King knows that his reputation is not exactly on the rise, so I think he's decided it is time to fight back.
Denverthen - I don't think any of the ministers knew. they are not business people prone to buying shares.
if the BOE had said the banks were bust then it wold have been game over - healthy banks like Barclays would have been gdragged down too. It WAS a national emergency.
Lloyds deal was wrong for Lloyds from day one - what on earth were they doing trying to do a deal with Brown. The loans were merely a part of a wider political scam.
I seem to remember howls of anguish as the Bank of England was forced to reveal its lending to Northern Crock - under EU rules apparently. It wasn't fair, the press said, Northern Crock would still be viable if the Bank hadn't ratted.
Now, we have howls of anguish as the Bank moved silently behind the scenes.....they can't win.....
what is Merv the wisemonkey doing in the pic -
think no evil ?
It's time to take to the streets. I've had enough.
And people wonder why I go on about the B of E, the BIS and all the other corrupt institutions. You only need read Denninger for the American story.
The caption on the picture of Mervyn King should be "My head hurts"
Merv is about to peel off his face mask to reveal the Lizard beneath.
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