ZoomClouds: John Redwood MP for Wokingham

... In the early days of the Prime Minister™s tenure the media gave him rave reviews for no good reason. As a long standing critic of his changes to the Bank of England in 1997, I was expecting financial problems. As a critic of his high spend policy, recklessly expanding the public sector without get...

THE £50 BILLION PACKAGE FOR THE BANKS WOULD HAVE SAVED NORTHERN ROCK IF INTRODUCED LAST AUTUMN. If the government and Bank of England can make £50 billion available to the banks today to get the mortgage market going again, why couldn™t they have done that last September to prevent the Northern ...

... es when they were failing to sort things out as they should. Many think the banks should be made to pay for their own mistakes, with the Treasury and Bank of England watching from the sidelines. I do not agree. Of course bonuses for the bosses should be removed when results are bad, dividends for ...

... ry distressed housing sector will stop falling, as it has crashed so far. Meanwhile on this die of the Atlantic we get a pep talk from the Bank of England, telling the banks they should lend more! Is this the same Bank of England that was telling bankers last autumn they were lending too ...

The œIndependent Bank of England allowed its Financial Stability Report to be published just before the local Elections, and allowed the spin to be placed on it that the losses in the financial sector will prove to overstated, that the Credit Crunch has not reached its worst point, and that...

This week the Bank of England took leave of its senses again. It generated blood curdling headlines that the state of inflation and the economy was now such that interest rates could not be lowered again this year or next. Newspapers wrote that we are to look forward to letters from the Governor ...

Yesterday we saw how The Bank of England has been far from independent over the last 11 years, as it has been slimmed down and bossed around by the present government. The main blame for the current high level of inflation rests with the government. The Bank™s failure to control price incre...

... udget. The more interesting estimate before us was the stonking £5,300 million extra cash estimate for Northern Rock resulting from the transfer of a Bank of England loan that previously had not appeared in the figures. No Treasury Minister was on hand to give us an update on how big the trading lo...

... rnment did to œhelp implement its policy was to nationalise the most aggressive of the mortgage banks, and then stop it undertaking new lending! The Bank of England and the government failed to keep markets liquid enough, so credit dried up at many of the smaller lenders, and the larger banks all h...

... t did to œhelp implement its policy was to nationalise the most aggressive of the mortgage banks, and then stop it undertaking new lending! With the Bank of England the government failed to keep markets liquid enough, so credit dried up at many of the smaller lenders, and the larger banks all had t...

... of many underlying economies. There is only one major Central Bank clearly fighting recession rather than inflation “ the Fed. The rudderless Bank of England lurches from mistake to mistake under the unsure Darling. It first created the inflation with interest rates that were too low, then i...

The Conservative Policy Review warned that the removal of powers from the Bank of England could make it more likely a bank went under. It also pointed out that the fiscal rules were well and truly broken a year ago and suggested ways to remedy them: 2.1. Making the Bank of England Independent T...

... ition on the forecourts lowering the prices of petrol and diesel at last, after several months of ever rising prices. It reinforces my message to the Bank of England - fight recession, inflation will subside as and when these prices come down. The markets which have made it so difficult for muddled...

... houses will be built this year, and would be urging the cancellation of even more new build projects to stop the price fall. Meanwhile over at the Bank of England they are less concerned that house prices are going down than that the prices of energy, food and other essentials are going up. They ...

... at economics. Whilst most people were busily repeating Labour spin about his genius at running the economy, I was critical of the way he trashed the Bank of England and taxed the pension funds to death at the beginning, disagreed with the huge surge of public spending, borrowing and credit in the m...

The latest figures for the UK and other Western economies confirms that the main threat is falling activity rather than inflation. The ECB and the Bank of England still think they have a problem balancing their prime aim of cutting inflation with their wish to avoid a major downturn. They have kept...

... be saying œThank heavens we are so dependent on the EU and not on the US, for we can ignore recessionary winds from across the Atlantic. Instead the Bank of England Governor had to warn yesterday that the UK authorities have been misleading us for some time about the likely growth rate in the UK th...

Readers of this site will know I have long been advocating that the Bank of England cuts interest rates and concentrates on fighting recession. Inflation will fall next year anyway. This has proved contentious with some of my readers. I ask them, how much more evidence do you need of slow...

The Bank of England meets this week to decide interest rates with its policy in tatters. Its sole aim is to keep inflation down to 2% per annum. The reason behind that instruction is to uphold the purchasing power of our currency. Neglect has led to a big devaluation of the pound, meaning our pur...

... priced in dollars. We will all be worse off. There is likely to be an immediate price to be paid for this imported inflation. The Bank of England will feel it has to keep interest rates higher for longer than it would otherwise. The Bank, if it were truly independent, would tell ...

The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (MPC) failed to control inflation on the way up, allowing interest rates that were too low for too long. The Uk made its own contribution to the world credit bubble, and has its own high inflation as a result. Expect more bad figures today. Now ...

... The Policy Report was a serious contribution to the debate about how to regulate and supervise markets. It warned that the removal of powers from the Bank of England would leave the Bank unable to handle a banking crisis, as time has proved to be true. It recommended giving the Bank the necessary po...

... hey now think they did wrong. The Report I helped produce said something much more important than the sentence Labour likes to quote. It said the Bank of England had been shorn of important responsibilities which meant it would not be able to cope with a banking problem when one came along. The...

... eassure people banks will have enough cash and capital to do the job. The Central banks have to keep on supplying cash as lenders of last resort. The Bank of England and the European Bank need to cut interest rates to start to combat recession, rather late in the day. The Europeans need to stop thin...

... hich do give proper support to depositors within the private sector. In the UK we need to improve the deposit protection system urgently. We need the Bank of England to lend against proper security where cash is needed, and we need orderly mergers and take overs where some institutions are too weak....

... ng more and more, and led the innovatory ways of borrowing without showing it on their own balance sheets. The following are also guilty: 1. The Bank of England, the ECB and the Fed all got monetary policy wrong. They set the wrong interest rates, and ignored the warning signs. They allowed a b...

... n will tumble. Some people now say there is no point in cutting the recommended rate because market rates will stay much higher. At some point the Bank of England has to get back in charge of the markets. In the meantime, cutting the recommended rate will help all those borrowers whose actual in...

... rs usefully do? There are five main areas they could concentrate on. Interest rates. They could tell the ECB and Gordon Brown could tell the Bank of England to get their rates down to around the 2% level chosen by the US. Concerted action to lead markets to lower rates might help. If we pe...

... mongers were prepared to do before they accepted their idea was wrong. As someone who has been a farily lonely voice explaining that the Bank of England was not made independent in 1997, and who thought the MPC alongside this government was likely to make a mess of running our economy,...

... f B and B needed more share capital it could seek new shareholders or ask existing ones to put up some more. If it was short of cash it could ask the Bank of England as lender of last Resort to lend it some, failing other sources of borrowing in the market. It could sell assets or seek a deal with a...

... t calling for proper regulation. This echoes our calls in the Economic Policy Review for better regulation of banks and the credit they extend by the Bank of England, when we warned of the dangers stemming from the loose monetary controls exercised in the early years of this century. We need the Ban...

... ve the Bill, but it needs a lot of improvement because the main things that have gone wrong in the past 11 years stem from the grave weakening of the Bank of England that occurred in 1997. I would like the Bill to go much further than the current draft in giving back to the Bank of England the pow...

... he time. Suddenly, in the last two days, it collapsed to $1.62. Market reports ascribe the sharp fall yesterday in part to the Governor of the Bank of England’s remarks. He told us the UK banking system had been on the edge of collapse before the government offered extra share capital t...

... higher fees for arranging and renewing loans and they will increase the interest rate they charge borrowers relative to the interest rate set by the Bank of England. If the government wanted to maintain or increase the amount of lending to small business, mortgage holders or any oth...

... rates and going on a rake™s progress will intensify the downward pressures on the pound, and cut living standards more quickly. It will also mean the Bank of England has to go easy on the interest rate cuts. That is why we need urgent action to stop the build up of debt, beginning...

The Bank of England’s Report makes gloomy reading. Why didn’t they foresee more of these problems a year or two ago when they could have taken better evasive action? Today we learn of possible future losses from banks, more difficulties for hedge funds and continuing trouble with deriv...

... Abbey. The Treasury has made a payment to Abbey for retail deposits not covered by the FSCS, amounting to approx £4 billion. The FSCS was granted a Bank of England loan to be replaced with a government loan. The government stands behind the FSCS. ortgage lenders to ply their trade, not less. ...

... ill rue the days that the government was so liberal with their money in the banking sector. All these banks had a future without state equity, if the Bank of England did its job as lender of last resort, and if the Regulator worked quietly behind the scenes on a timetable for strengthening their cap...

Months ago I urged the authorities to override the Bank of England’s MPC and slash interest rates to head off recession. At last the cries are coming from all parts of the spectrum to do just that, months too late. I have also urged a sharp reduction in UK spending on bank shares and bank n...

... oming clearer, do they suddenly panic, and do what they should have done a year ago? Have they been pressurised by the government acting through the Bank of England? I would normally welcome a major U turn by a group of powerful people who have got it wrong. However, on this occasion, they have ...

... is downturn. The MPC late in the day called time on too much borrowing in the private sector by hoisting interest rates to make borrowing dearer. The Bank of England starved the money markets of funds to prevent banks lending more, forcing Northern Rock and a couple of other banks into trouble. In 2...

... h one of these claims is a lie. As readers of this blog will know, I proposed tightening the regulation of capital and liquidity and rebuilding the Bank of England’s powers to control the mortgage banks and other banks in the summer of 2007. I have set out many options to keep the banks afl...

... years later they worked it out. In December 2003 the Labour government decided to switch inflation targets for their so called independent Bank of England. They set the Bank an easier target to hit. They claimed they were bringing us into line with the rest of the EU, though I suspect the...