September 2nd, 2008
When did they find out about the credit crunch?
More from the interview that keeps on giving. Alistair Darling told the Guardian that he first heard the credit crunch alarm bells while on holiday with his family. Here is the quote in full:
“I remember I picked up the FT in the supermarket, as you do, and it had the European Central Bank starting to put money into the economy. I phoned the office to ask why they were doing quite so much. It didn’t surprise me that money was going in - there was concern going around - but it was the sheer scale of it…..No one knew how serious it was yet.”
The date of the ECB intervention is August 9, 2007. This was a surprise on the day, but the problems had been emerging for six months or more. Mr Darling had been chancellor for about five weeks, but you hope he had been doing some homework beforehand. Yet it seems that, like Gordon Brown**, he paid limited attention to financial woes spreading across the Atlantic. On this point, at least, Mr Darling remains “on message”.
Here are a selection of FT headlines from June, July and August 2007
Financial Times, 3 August 2007, 727 words, (English)
Liquidity alarm bells sound.
Financial Times, 1 August 2007, 841 words, (English)
Subprime fallout strikes Europe.
Financial Times, 31 July 2007, 484 words, (English)
Credit investors pick up pace in flight from risk.
Financial Times, 12 July 2007, 529 words, (English)
The Rock needs to reassess its strategy.
Financial Times, 28 June 2007, 795 words, (English)
Does it all add up? Worries grow about the true value of repackaged debt.
Financial Times, 28 June 2007, 1857 words, (English)
Subprime shockwaves spread across the Atlantic.
Financial Times, 27 June 2007, 784 words, (English)
BoE governor warns lenders to use caution.
Financial Times, 21 June 2007, 528 words, (English)
** As Mr Brown memorably said earlier this year, “no one could have anticipated what was going to happen out of the subprime market”. Dismissing a journalists suggestion that he should have spent more time monitoring the credit markets as chancellor, Mr Brown sneered: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should have spent the first half of last year looking at the subprime crisis in America and looking in intricate detail at what was going to come out of it.”













