As someone who works in the City, even I sometimes think the Occupy Wall St brigade have a point. When you consider Barclays’ behaviour today, it’s a surprise that the protests didn’t come earlier. The bank has announced an $11.5 billion loan to junk-rated Kinder Morgan Inc to fund an oil pipeline transaction. The banks
Three years on from the Great Bonus Bailout, where is the UK taxpayer standing on their investment in the UK banks? The answer is less than encouraging. RBS shares currently trade at 23.9p, less than half of the 50.5p purchase price. And Lloyds provides a similar picture — the taxpayer got in at around 74p
Be careful what you wish for, arch Eurosceptics. UK banks are exposed in the Eurozone to an eye-watering £1 trillion. The taxpayers’ fiscal union with the banks in 2008 has exposed the UK to the Eurozone’s indebted periphery, just as if we had joined the Euro. The Bank of England’s cross-border lending data shows the scale of the problem. This isn’t
The City of London’s financial market gurus threw their toys out of the pram again this morning, following the US Federal Reserve’s decision last night not to launch more quantitative easing. The stock markets have slumped as a result. Why aren’t they happy? Even Bank of England research admits that QE gives the stock market
