Friday, February 13, 2009
Brown’s chance to save himself
The UK prime minister’s handling of last year’s bank rescue looked strong and confident. He did well this year at Davos.
But then we had Crosby, Balls, and now Jacqui Smith. And attention has also shifted to how the City of London was run during Mr Brown’s tenure at the Treasury - appallingly badly, and Brown should have shown more courage then, which could have been well rewarded. 'Fred the Shred' seems to have behaved bizarrely for a start, as I often say, and the RBS 5% of Bank of China purchase looked outstandingly appalling. And that is before you get to this public-private partnership idea, which in practice far from improving things allowed the fat cats to leech the taxpayers almost as much as the Tories do.
IMO: As the FT says, the government must act as soon as it is clear what it wants to do and not a moment sooner. The recent decision to delay announcing the Budget until late April is probably wise: there is much to be prepared. But more haste, please, and more speed. And what to do is on the one hand to forever destroy the free play of the fat cats, as Obama should have started to do already in the US (please, no more Reaganomics ever, and in the USA more democracy not more fat cat handouts ). Obama who is new and can welcome new ideas, might with prompting follow Brown. Brown should certainly not let the 'Yes,Minister' scum types in Whitehall to rule the roost, either. All this should not be unduly difficult but will need a level of speed and courage Brown is capable of.
The UK prime minister’s handling of last year’s bank rescue looked strong and confident. He did well this year at Davos.
But then we had Crosby, Balls, and now Jacqui Smith. And attention has also shifted to how the City of London was run during Mr Brown’s tenure at the Treasury - appallingly badly, and Brown should have shown more courage then, which could have been well rewarded. 'Fred the Shred' seems to have behaved bizarrely for a start, as I often say, and the RBS 5% of Bank of China purchase looked outstandingly appalling. And that is before you get to this public-private partnership idea, which in practice far from improving things allowed the fat cats to leech the taxpayers almost as much as the Tories do.
IMO: As the FT says, the government must act as soon as it is clear what it wants to do and not a moment sooner. The recent decision to delay announcing the Budget until late April is probably wise: there is much to be prepared. But more haste, please, and more speed. And what to do is on the one hand to forever destroy the free play of the fat cats, as Obama should have started to do already in the US (please, no more Reaganomics ever, and in the USA more democracy not more fat cat handouts ). Obama who is new and can welcome new ideas, might with prompting follow Brown. Brown should certainly not let the 'Yes,Minister' scum types in Whitehall to rule the roost, either. All this should not be unduly difficult but will need a level of speed and courage Brown is capable of.
# posted by uv : 2:39 PM
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
