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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Perhaps Britain’s businesses should add up their spending plans and publish a corporate-sector budget. It is commerce that creates wealth and government that spends it and Alistair Darling’s latest budget depends totally on business reviving the economy.
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Do people who drive cars until they’re nine years old really replace their clapped-out bangers with brand new vehicles?  That’s the theory of those advocating £2,000 grants to scrap old cars.
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President Obama’s $500,000 cap on top bankers’ pay may play well in Des Moines but it is as bad for America as it is bad for Wall Street. If you want banks run properly you have to pay properly.
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You can’t blame the trade unions for seeking a substantial increase in the minimum wage but politicians must resist their demands.
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A six-month Vat holiday for small firms, nevermind a cut in National Insurance, is not the antidote to recession. It will be impossible to recover the deferred tax.
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Peter Mandelson has a reputation as a strategist and a schemer. We should be pleased the Department of Business has a man with such talents in charge.
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The banks got into trouble with 100 per cent mortgages, so why does the government see such loans as the solution? Lenders can’t take an equity stake in homes that have no equity.
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Pawnbroking is booming despite interest rates of 8 per cent – a month. A sign of recession and a haven for the feckless you may say – but think of it as banking and it makes more sense.
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The Competition Commission has moved into new startling territory in ordering BAA to split up its airport business. Until now it has blocked expansion: now it is telling established businesses to shrink.
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