Cap in hand
In the British media, no-one has ever gone cap-in-hand for anything except Dennis Healey in 1976 to the IMF (who is never described as going in any other way). Until now, that is, when Gordon of Harry's Place says:Norway [has gone] cap in hand to the US Federal Reserve for a £2.9 billion lifeline
The mind boggles. Norway, with a sovereign wealth fund with hundreds of billions of dollars, fuelled by enormous oil revenues, is broke, and reliant on begging for just $5bn in order to stay alive?
A google search suggests Gordon has essentially just lifted it from this Times editorial which says:
Norway has gone cap in hand to the US Federal Reserve for a $5 billion (£2.9 billion) lifeline
and in turn the newspaper's leader writer (I think we can safely say in this instance not Oliver Kamm) has taken it from this story in the Sunday Times, where Jenny Hjul declares that Iceland was reduced to 'begging' for this lifeline:
Norway has had to beg the US Federal Reserve for a $5 billion (£2.9 billion) lifeline
Poor Norway. Here's the Norwegian take on this, which is that the central bank there has arranged a $5bn dollar swap facility with the Federal Reserve. This is similar then to those arranged by the UK ($40bn), Australia ($10bn), Sweden ($10bn), Japan ($60bn), the ECB ($110bn), Switzerland ($27bn) and Canada ($10bn), although for some reason one assumes these countries did not go cap-in-hand and were not made to beg.
posted by Matthew @ 10/15/2008 01:41:00 PM
Comments: 2
