Broadcast: Monday 27 October 2008 08:00 PM |
Has the multi-billion-pound bank bailout saved our economy? City speculator Hugh Hendry doesn't think so.
Don't Bank On The Bailout
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Has the multi-billion-pound bank bailout saved our economy? City speculator Hugh Hendry doesn't think so.
His billion-dollar hedge fund operates in the eye of the financial storm, engaging in the short-selling that's been condemned for causing so much of the recent chaos. But Hugh robustly defends his trade, saying he is "in pursuit of the truth", and lays the blame squarely at the door of the financial elites: the banks, pensions funds, regulators and governments who were all asleep at the wheel.
This film follows Hugh as he travels from the Square Mile in London to Wall Street in America, talking to some of the world's leading economists and investors along the way. Hugh thinks the rescue of the banks could doom us all. "We'll have to ratchet up our level of national debt to make this country feel as if it's fighting another world war", says Hugh. And our financial system may recover, but will the wider economy? Are we now simply heading for a recession, or a full-blown depression on the scale of the 1930s? Goodbye boom, hello bust?
Hugh argues that, as a nation, we have to prepare for the worst - and let's not bank on the bailout.
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