A Missing Piece BP has now agreed to set up a $20 billion dollar fund and cancel its dividends, as this Blog indicated it would have to a week ago. In the deal announced after talks at the White House there is a large piece missing. President Obama indicated this tidy sum was ‘not a […]
Reform comes to the City The Chancellor’s speech last night at the Mansion House was hugely encouraging. At last there is evidence that the nature of the problems we face as well as the scale is understood. I am not very particular about the nature of regulation. Any logical system properly organised will work. The […]
More Enquiries Predictably the Unionist side and their sympathisers are calling for enquiries into various atrosities from the years of strife to be investigated to balance Saville. Although there may be a case for some sort of Truth and Reconciliation commission on the South African model, the call for more enquiries is misplaced. Nobody argues […]
Bloody Sunday Whilst I do not see how the cost of this enquiry can be justified, I have no doubt at all that it is one of, perhaps the, most conclusive and healing outcomes to any enquiry in our history. It confirms what most always suspected, that the Army had gone badly wrong on that fateful […]
More about the Banks Last night Will Hutton delivered another excellent Dispatches programme on Channel 4, showing just how brazen the banks have been in ignoring the lessons of their rescue and how, as he puts it, they have become like a State within a State, ignoring government or lobbying it to do their bidding. […]
Another Black Wednesday? Apparently an alarming number of investors are betting upon a market crash, as nervousness about the state of the sovereign debts mount. A global financial crisis brought on by the banks being silly has been convenient to everyone, as a simple thread of explanation for the economic disaster, politicians especially. It is now […]
BP Fund and this Blog. Regular readers of this Blog know that its purpose is to try and indicate outcomes by getting ahead of the curve of current commentary. It is with pride that we can report that on June 11th in a very extensive post on the stricken oil giant, I suggested that a ring […]
That Goal Okay, the goalie messed up. That is not why England failed to win. They should have scored two more goals to make up for the mishap. Blaming their unconvincing result on Green is misleading. England had the strikers there to score and they did not. The Americans played well and showed themselves well […]
BP There are now many threads to this. First let us deal with what the tabloids call anti-British rhetoric. This is the American style to round on people to blame. They do it with each other and they do it to outsiders. It is their culture. Their history shows them on the one hand generous, caring, […]