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.
Labels: finance, The Times
Only one house sold a week in UK
Declares the
Times. Bizarrely. I know things are bad, but it's not that bad.
Labels: house prices
Spoken word artistry
Coming soon, a photo of your genial host dressed as an elephant at a circus-themed fancy dress party. That was to launch this
book, by "spoken word artist" (poet to you and me) and daughter of a friend,
Laura Dockrill. The perfect Christmas present for friends and family.
Labels: Present recommendations
Dividends and pensions
This is one of the most confused
articles I have ever read. I can only imagine from reading this that the author believes windmills cause wind, or umbrellas rain.
Labels: finance
Constitutional Clubs
My neighbour has opened a brand new cinema and community venue, the
Pinkham Lighthouse, here in Kensal Rise, which I urge anyone nearby to frequent.
My reason for this post, however, is to ask if anyone can explain what a 'Constitutional Club' is, as that is where the cinema is based. A google search is not very helpful, except to suggest is simply a Conservative club. But why are they named Constitutional and not Conservative?
Labels: politics
Pull down South London and start again
Is Keynes as relevant now as he was then? I suppose there are some parts worth saving, I always liked the Trinity Arms in Brixton.
“There are today many wellwishers of their country who believe that the most useful thing which they and their neighbours can do to mend the situation is to save more than usual ... Now in certain circumstances all this would be right, but in present circumstances it is quite wrong. Suppose we were to stop spending our incomes altogether and were to save the lot. Why, everyone would be out of work. And before long we would have no incomes to spend ... Now is the time for municipalities to be busy and act with all kinds of sensible improvements ... I read a few days ago of a proposal to drive a great new road, a broad boulevard, parallel to the Strand, on the south side of the Thames, as a new thoroughfare joining Westminster to the City ... But I would like to see something bigger still. For example, why not pull down the whole of south London from Westminster to Greenwich, and make a good job of it ... at the same time providing hundreds of acres of squares and avenues, parks and public spaces ... Is it better that men should stand idle and miserable drawing the dole?” From a radio talk by J.M. Keynes, January 14 1931 (reprinted in Essays in Persuasion).
via Samuel Brittan's FT column today.
Labels: London
But not the smartest
Lloyds TSB, of which I am a shareholder, have a major advertising campaign in The Metro today with the strapline:
Say hello to the world's smallest bank.
Well good luck to them, but it's going to be a tough one to pull off in the current climate. The takeover of HBOS might help.
Labels: finance
Creative statistics
Fraser Nelson we've come across before, claiming that New Orleans was richer than London on the basis of confusing household and per capita income. Here's another
classic:
Official figures provided to The Spectator show that there were 5.1 million people on out-of-work benefits when Labour took office. As of last February, that figure had fallen by just 867,000 — not much to show for what Mr Brown likes to describe as the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth in a century. In a decade, he made less progress than the Thatcher government did between 1987 and 1990, when the comparable jobless count fell by 895,000.
Labels: Fraser Nelson
Bloggers go global
In Asia. Reading the Japan Times I see an Op-Ed by Oliver Kamm on Gordon Brown* ** Switching on either CNN Asia or BBC World (I forget which) I see he is going to be on at 6pm discussing the international banking crisis.
* In which Oliver claims Gordon Brown is directly responsible for high inflation because he should have taken steps to limit credit expansion, which I think is a turnaround for Oliver in that he is cricising central bank independence.
** By the way I think the NYT (from which it was syndicated) makes an error in calling the Labour Party the Labor Party, for that is not its name, and furthermore this would cause problems when discussing the Australian Labor Party.
UPDATE And now the Sunday edition of a Japanese paper has six pages from the Times, back in broadsheet form, with an editorial about Blair's resignation and how the London Mayor should choose the Police Commissioner. I understood the problem with this was that the Met has many national responsibilities as well as London ones, but maybe this can be got around.
Labels: bloggers
