Brown's excuses and disgraceful US blame game blown!

The Independent on Sunday, so-called but nevertheless staunch supporter of New Labour, has a columnist today, a Mr Chris Watling, who is described as Chief Executive of Longview Economics, who writes under a headline predicting Britain as bound for the wilderness, amongst other perceptive nuggets the following: It should be noted that our crisis was not born out of America's sub-prime lending, but was of our own making. As the five big British banks made loans at a rapid rate, their combined balance sheet ballooned from a mere one times GDP in 1999 to four times by 2007. While not as bad as in Iceland, where banks' balance sheets reached 10 times GDP, it is still a frighteningly large number. While some of that growth reflected global and domestic acquisitions, most related to domestic lending.