The government’s losses from Black Wednesday are legion, but already quantitative easing has cost us more than that doomed attempt to save sterling in 1992. The QE losses have reached £8bn and the Bank of England hasn’t yet started to unwind the programme.
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Nevermind that the Bank of England kept secret for a year its massive loan to HBoS and RBS (LON:RBS), why on earth did it choose to break its silence on the day Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY) announces its record rights issue?
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The period of falling prices and low inflation was novel but all good things come to an end: from now on it looks like business as normal as prices rise again. And why would any government or central bank want otherwise?
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The government’s promise of three new banks looks attractive for an industry that has retreated to a Big Four offering little competition. But one of the three newcomers isn’t new and the other two are tiddlers.
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If banks shouldn’t be “too big to fail” how small must they be before we allow them to collapse? It’s the question the Bank of England’s governor must answer.
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Getting your insurance company to give you the money to pay its premium is a clever wheeze, but that’s what Lloyds Banking Group is planning. If it finances its participation in the government’s bad-debt insurance scheme with a rights issue, the state, as largest shareholder, will have to stump up the biggest part of the £16bn cost.
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Does the bank of England have a secret policy to devalue the pound? It’s being highly successful if it has.
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Dare one ask, amid all the comment to mark the year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, were the financial regulators wrong in refusing to rescue the bank?
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We expect Tory and Labour spokesman to be political but it is worrying to find the Bank of England and Financial Services Authority playing them at their own game. Aren’t the Bank and the regulator meant to be seeking stability? And isn’t the Bank supposed to be independent?

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If the Financial Services Authority is to disappear after the general election, then chairman Lord Turner seems determined to destroy the financial services industry first. Not only does he propose taxing it into oblivion, he thinks Britain would benefit from being less dependent on the sector.
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