Battle for Britain's Banks!

Last week the Marx inspired British Government declared war on Britain's Banks. We must assume that the phony element of last week is about to come to a close as Labours propaganda platforms of the Sunday morning TV political programmes (not an opposition politician in sight) gave prominence to two of the principal plotters Lord Mandelson and Yvette Cooper to announce that the assault would be taken to the boardrooms of the dissenters led by the aforesaid Baron of Hartlepool and Foy with Alistair Darling in tow. The announcement this morning of the Dutch Government bail out of ING brought memories of earlier follies such as that of Barings with further echoes from France with the sackings of executives of Caisse Epargne for getting a 425 million sterling bet wrong on the stock market rising. But in Britain this week we must look to Barclays for clues as to the direction of the campaign for the future control of what was once Great Britain. HSBC is also holding out but as I had reason to discover when I happened to have dinner with its then Chairman in New Zealand at the time of the takeover of what I recall he described as the 'minnow' of a British High Street Bank, The Midland, that giant of international finance is in no way a British Bank, a matter of considerable pride, I recall, for that Scot of self-proclaimed humble origins. So Barclays is the one to watch - an international bank it is true, yet one that seemed to grow by clinging to the coat tails of the British establishment during its period of expansion into Empire, rather than international trading acumen. Its management always seemed lack-lustre to me but whether that will have spared it from many of the excesses of most of its competitors or made it the receptacle for the dross of their own mistakes yet remains to be seen. Lloyds and HBOS issues look set to become a side-show this week, although it is disturbing to see Legal and General recommend the merger, Lloyds shareholders should make their own calculations, large finance companies may easily be swayed by their holdings in HBOS when casting their votes a shareholders of Lloyds! The taxpayers can merely look on in horror and trust that all these deals may yet collapse before a single penny of the billions of taxpayers funds pledged, which can never be realistically raised let alone repaid, are actually legally committed let alone begun to be transferred. (Link on latest borrowing added at 11:30 am, here). David Cameron of the Tories, on Radio 4 this morning, offering 1 penny off Corporation Tax for small companies with less than four employees never fails to exceed ones worst expectations for total irrelevance - even he calculates the total effect for the proposed six month validity would only be worth six hundred pounds - hardly worth losing the opportunity to ram home to the Government that they are completely bankrupt and can now only cut commitments! Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has his own interesting views in the Telegraph again this morning, here.