Faisal Islam
Northern Rock – a money bucket that never ends
News that the government is to extend another £12bn in loans to Northern Rock suggests the nationalised bank is a tool of government pump priming.
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FactCheck: will we make a profit from the bank bailouts?
Ministers say the taxpayer will end up making a profit after bailing out the banks to the tune of £100bn. But are they telling us the whole story?
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Faisal Islam
Electionomics II: promoting short-term growth
Amid the chaos, it appears Team Brown are clinging on to one hope: the economy. As the prime minister himself has just said: “People are beginning to see the difference… there are already some instances of the economy showing results.” There’s some irony here. In a previous abortive attempt at blogging I posted about electionomics…
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Jon Snow
Dunfermline unathletic
So Britain’s 12th largest building society goes bust – and the chairman complains that the chancellor isn’t bailing it out. Stunning! If, as some suggest, the Dunfermline Building Society is a victim of reckless lending, what possible obligation does Mr Darling have to bail it out?
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Jon Snow
Where the US leads, could others follow?
AIG, the US insurer which got through $170bn of taxpayers’ money in order to survive and then had the cheek to pay $165m of it to dozens of senior executives, is up before a congressional committee today.
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Jon Snow
Unhappy returns to Northern Rock
Can it only be a year since Northern Rock disgraced the British financial system and collapsed under the weight of its own hubris and incompetence? Did we think then that it would prove the Northern tip of a very large iceberg indeed? Above and beyond anyone else I blame my own breed, we journalists, who…