Here is my comment on Joan's site:
This is a scary interview that deals with the UK situation:[UPDATE: here is an excellent article about just what's been done by the Irish political class. A warning to us all]Our friends down south would see an immediate problem with the GERS Scottish surplus, which allows for "a share of the UK government's banking bailout funding". Read any English site and they'll say than ALL of the RBS/HBoS bailout funding should be attributable to Scotland because their registered offices are here.
There are several points we can make in response. Would an independent England have permitted a foreign bank (RBS) to take over NatWest and so grow so big? Even if RBS had grown so large in an independent Scotland, would the City not have given more support to Barclays (and not to the foreign RBS) in the ABN/Amro take-over battle thus saving RBS? And the big one: What banking regulations would Scotland have had if independent back in 2008?
It's no good for Nats to just say that we'd have done things differently. Given the dominant Keynesian belief system I'd guess that we may well have gone down the Irish road. What a future Scottish chancellor needs to say is that there will be NO bailouts of banks - or of any other private business for that matter. Government guarantees are what have led to this crisis. Until the mal-investments that were caused by the state-supported credit boom are liquidated, there will be no recovery.
1 comment:
Comments made on previous template:
Alasdair
Mr Higham
Are you back to that comparison of your near neighbours to a tin of soup, as enunciated by Janet, of Dr Finlay's Casebook fame ?
(grin)
23 November 2010, 02:01:48 GMT
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james higham
Then again, they are Oirish, David.
22 November 2010, 12:13:45 GMT
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David Farrer
John b,
Unfortunately the Irish model is widespread.
Of course, if I'd been a Scottish Chancellor I'd have eliminated central banking and government guarantees on day one, introduced a flat rate income or sales tax and then repaired to the Oxford Bar...
20 November 2010, 10:18:36 GMT
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john b
Would an independent England have permitted a foreign bank (RBS) to take over NatWest and so grow so big?
Yes. See: Santander.
Even if RBS had grown so large in an independent Scotland, would the City not have given more support to Barclays (and not to the foreign RBS)
No. M&A advisory would still have been largely run out of London (as it is for Irish companies), so it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to anyone. What banking regulations would Scotland have had if independent back in 2008? It seems likely they would have been as shoddy as Ireland's and Iceland's, especially as the SNP are on record citing Ireland and Iceland as enviable role-models. And, as you say, that they would then have followed the Irish model when it came to making impossible guarantees that bankrupted the country.
20 November 2010, 08:08:06 GMT
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john b
Sorry about the weird formatting - looked fine in the entry box...
20 November 2010, 08:08:31 GMT
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Bugger the Panda
I totally agree.
The Government should have separated the two banking businesses; retail and casino. Let the casino side pay its way or go down and then guarranteed the High Street side, depostitors and borrowers.
It is a fundamental principle of captalism that risk is rewarded with riches or loss, not riches and bail outs when the gamble is lost.
Why should car makers, hoteliers, builders, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers shouls also have the right not to go bust under this socialised capitalism. Heads hey win and Tails we get shafted.
The banks have been shafting us for centuries, when we have been unable to render to them our pound of flesh. No pay the banks and we go down.
This is nothing but a brazen theft.
Eric Cantona has just suggested to the French protestors that they don't bother to march and get their heads beaten by the CRS. On December the 7th everybody should just go to their bank and withdraw their savings. That would get their attention and the Government's pretty damn quickly.
They need us to be sheep to survive.
Just cut off their life blood.
19 November 2010, 20:33:48 GMT
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