Right. I’ve sorted out a bizarre WordPress permissions issue, and now have full control over this blog again. Hurrah. In other news, apologies for not posting anything for a while. I’ve been in Canada and San Francisco not working, and therefore my blogging threshold/time has been limited.
In particular, apologies for not posting anything much here or elsewhere on the financial crisis / teacup / disaster that’s going to kill us all / etc. I’d like to claim this was based on the same worthy principles as Dsquared’s lack of comment, but actually it’s more that a) I’ve been on holiday, and mountains are more fun than Congressional bills and b) it’s getting towards the ‘complexity beyond my experience or understanding’ end of the spectrum, so I’m reluctant to say anything which isn’t either very flippant or very data-driven.
Luis Enrique has some interesting thoughts at the other place, which are probably as close to my views right now as anything I’ve seen. Oh, and Alex’s piece on how anyone who thinks the Tories would be less inept at handling the current mess than Labour is certifiably mad is probably worth a read.
I’m starting an exciting period of gardening leave now-ish, so may have more time to comment shortly. Anything I’m particularly proud of will go on LibCon; anything I’m not totally ashamed of will go up here. In the meantime, I’d be delighted to hear your views and/or pointers towards interesting people on the crisis.
One thing that I will say here, though, is that the US government is not planning to give $700bn to the banks, and that the UK government has not spent £50bn on bailing out Bradford & Bingley. In both cases, they’re taking on assets that more or less everyone who isn’t mad agrees are generally worth something approximating their book value, which is perfectly reasonable.
The reason intervention is required is that if (e.g.) B&B went bust, then without state intervention it would have to liquidate its mortgage portfolio at fire-sale prices. Now, this would be an absolutely excellent deal for anyone with cash to spare – the problem is, there aren’t any non-state actors with £50bn in cash to spare right now.
The underlying house mortgages aren’t going to decline significantly in value (even if house prices fall 25-35% in the medium term, that’ll be mostly equity lost by homeowners rather than negative equity), but once a bank is perceived as weak, its asset value is the fire-sale price of its assets rather than their underlying value. Governments are among the few institutions with the cash and the long-term focus to go beyond the market’s sillyness on this (although Lloyds TSB is also getting itself a very good deal, and if I were HSBC or StanChar right now then I’d be seriously considering purchasing some distressed Western assets with the backing of my Asian savers’ deposits…)
This was pretty good, I thought.
Hmm. It's an interesting piece, but basically wrong: although he's correct on the insurance scam and on the general confusion, the underlying loans, in general, aren't bad.
That's why the whole current mess is so bizarre and surreal – very few of the assets are 'toxic', but because nobody knows which are or which bank will be irrationally forced into bankruptcy next week despite its underlying assets being OK, nobody's willing to lend anyone anything.
What is the Tory plan re – administration and the BOE?
I've read Yorkshire ranters posts and it does seem like lying/back of fag packet stuff.
Is this fair ? are people missing something about what the tories were proposing for NR and B+B ?