I am starting to wish I’d spent yesterday afternoon in the Lords rather than following the navel-gazing Commons debate over the structure of the committee looking into the Damian Green affair. (Why do MPs always turn up en masse when talking about themselves?)
Some real gems in the Lords’ Hansard.
Such as this hostage to fortune from Lord Myners, the new City minister, when asked about the £37bn bank bail-out. He was asked whether the money would enable new lending or just repair banks’ tattered balance sheets.
Both was the answer. It was available for new lending AND supporting banks in withstanding the inevitable write-offs.
“It is an all-weather capital structure, designed to withstand the pressures that we know bank balance sheets will have to cope with over the next 12 months so that banks are adequately capitalised to perform their economic function.”
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey