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From The Times

The Times

November 4, 2008

Where's the money gone? Not here, say guilty three

Anne Treneman: Parliamentary Sketch

The three men sat, in a row, looking like a trio of naughty, if rather aged, schoolboys. They may, in reality, be the most powerful men in the land when it comes to the economy but, for their appearance before the Treasury committee, they had donned the careful blank faces of pupils caught red-handed. John McFall, the Labour committee chairman, effortlessly adopted the persona of the stern and humourless headmaster as he faced the guilty three: Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, and Whatshisname, the new guy at the Financial Services Authority. They did, actually, look furtive.

Beside Mr McFall was a stack of 5,000 e-mails with questions for the Guilty Three from the Great British Public. The trio gulped. Mr McFall read out the first question, from Ted W. “Where,” he demanded, “has all the money gone?”

The Chancellor began to burble about global situations. I don't think Ted W. will be too impressed. The answer seemed to boil down to: “Somewhere else.”

Michael Fallon, a Tory, demanded to know who was really responsible. “We have this impression of See No Blame, Hear No Blame and Take No Blame,” he said. As he said this, See No Blame, Hear No Blame and Take No Blame didn't move a facial muscle. Had they been behind the bikesheds taking group Botox?

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Mr Fallon fixed his gaze on Take No Blame (the Chancellor). Why didn't he say he was sorry. “I said to you,” said Take No Blame, “that I accept responsibility for everything that I am responsible for.” The other two looked impressed, for this was, as I'm sure you can see, a wonderfully blameless answer.

Now came a question for See No Blame, also known as Whatshisname of the FSA, or Lord Turner of Ecchinswell. Nigel B wanted to know why no one had foreseen the dangers posed by the alphabet soup of complex securities used by financial institutions.

See No Blame said he didn't see it like that. He said there were two kinds of alphabet soup. The first was made out of CDOs, ADCP, CDS and CDO squared. He wasn't sure what could have been done about this (take out the Cs, I thought, for a start). See No Blame said the second kind of alphabet soup was made of SIVs and that was something that perhaps should have been seen.

Well, why weren't they all seen? See No Blame looked almost transcendantal. “Sometimes the wisdom of crowds is deeply unwise,” he announced.

Now came a question for Hear No Blame (Mervyn King) about the £37 billion bank bailout. “Has the taxpayer been taken for a mug?” Hear No Blame wasn't having any of that. “No,” he insisted, “this is an investment which I believe will pay off.” And so the blame game went on, for, as you can see, it's nobody's fault.

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Interestingly we will all want someone other than ourselves to blame for the mess. The times on Sunday published an article by Ben Okri - entitled "all our false oracles have failed" I suggest it is read by all and sundry including the 'see, hear and take' no blame gang.

pd, bristol,

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ALSO IN INDUSTRY SECTORS

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