Quote of the day

comes from the BBC's Robert Peston talking on one of his favourite subjects

The new chief executives at the Rock and RBS: men. The new chairs of the Rock, RBS and Lloyds: men. The vast majority of board members of all three organisations: men. All three banks are playgrounds for ageing white men just like me and the prime minister. Which is why there are some who are bound to argue that Gordon Brown should get the gender mix in order in his own house, before preaching to the rest of the private sector

Peston questions whether the Bank Of England can maintain its independence

It is worth reading Robert Peston's blog as he talks about the the threat to the Independence of the bank of England as the recession continues.

Its Independence was the plank on which new Labour laid the economic growth of the past ten years but according to Peston,

Can the Bank of England's autonomy over monetary policy, its independence
from political interference, be sustained as the Bank Rate approaches
zero?

He argues that

the Bank of England is about to start using measures other than movements in its policy interest rate to influence the interest rates actually paid by businesses and households and to increase the stock of money in the economy.

Nice of Peston to point this out

The primary motive of the £400bn of additional taxpayer support provided last month by the Treasury was to prevent the collapse of the banking system (and really it wasn't such a bad thing to prevent a meltdown of most of our banks).

Or to put it more bluntly, the transfer to our banks of so much of our cash wasn't designed to kickstart lending by our banks - although it's unsurprising that many of you think that's what it was all about, because ministers created that impression

.

The words of Robert Peston and it seems that are polititians atre unaware of this fact as well given yesterday's exchanges in the Commons.

It is though nice of Peston to point this out but surely this should be coming from the government and there is more

the only fact that you need to know about mortgages is that well over 50% of lending capacity in the mortgage market has been taken out by the problems at HBOS, the collapse of Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, and a freeze on new lending by small building societies.
The Treasury can shout all it wants to the recipients of capital from taxpayers that they must provide more loans to homeowners, but these recipients simply don't have the resources to fill the gap.