Thursday, December 11, 2008
Don't Mention the Germans...
Iain Dale 1:22 PM
1. They are very rattled by it.
2. Their explanation for it indicates they think we are stupid.
Do they really think we will buy that it's all to do with internal German politics, and troubles within the CDU/SPD coalition. Steinbruck is a left winger, and is criticising his British comrades for their lemming-like policies. What on earth has that got to do with internal German politics. The clip on Sky which Guido has, where Eamonn Holmes interviews Balls is astonishing - both for Balls' words and secondly for the fact that Holmes doesn't seem to express much incredulity at what he is told. But Brown was suitably impressed by Baldrick'sBalls' spin, that he too is now trotting it out. They really must think we are stupid.Brown Tries to Sugar the Medicine
Iain Dale 10:17 AM
AS: But you must have seen that while you were Chancellor. Surely those alarm bells should have been ringing for you?
PM: Well, I am angry at the behaviour of banks because we did not know what was actually happening behind the scenes. We did not know that they were operating all these investment
vehicles.
This is just not credible. He was Chancellor during all these years and many politicians and economists were telling him exactly what was happening. He also trawls out his "it started in America line" but then goes on to explain it. It's very revealing...PM: We do need a lot of blunt speaking at the moment about what has happened.
Something happened in America, it then spread across to Europe and to Britain
and now it is engulfing the whole world and it is unique. It is the first global
financial crisis.AS: Did you ever in your wildest dreams believe that you were going to walk into this hornet’s nest as far as the financial crisis is concerned? Why have we in England got this problem? I mean what has it got to do with America?
He says it started in America, but this is exactly what was happening in this country at exactly the same time. And his own regulatory system, which he set up, failed to address the issue. It wasn't just American banks which were offering mortgages at 125%. UK banks were too - under his watch. Opposition politicians pointed this out but were slapped down. Yes, it did happen in America, but it happened here too - at the same time.
PM: Out of America, a lot of people were persuaded to buy mortgages, they couldn’t pay for them, nobody quite knew when they bought these mortgage products that they were totally worthless. They parcelled them up so you had thousands of mortgages, and some of our British banks made mistakes. They were spending hundreds of millions of pounds of their own customers’ money buying products that they thought was going to make them a big profit.
UPDATE: A reader alerts me to THIS fabulous piece in today's Telegraph by Irwin Stelzer, which makes the points I make above, but far more eloquently. It concludes...Gordon Brown's search for a villain might better take him to the nearest
mirror than to Washington, DCGordon Tells a Whopping Great 'Brownie'
Iain Dale 8:00 AM
It seems that Mr Brown made a bit of a boo boo while I was wending my way to Russia. Others have commented enough on Gordon saving the world so I won't add my two pennyworth, except to say that I have expected him to add "from the crisis which started in America." I was more interested in what he added afterwards, which no one seems to have picked up on. Listen to the clip above and you can clearly hear him say..."Not a single depositer in Britain lost any money".
That is not just what Fraser Nelson would call a 'Brownie'. It was a whopper. Indeed, it is not unfair to call it a lie. How does he think he can get away with these constant untruths?
I really do think there's something deeply psychological going on here. I have no doubt that in his own mind he really does believe that he personally has saved the world. It wasn't a slip of the tongue. That's what he really thinks. This is a man so delusional that he has come to believe his own propaganda. Very dangerous.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
The reaction of Ed Balls and Gordon Brown to the devastating criticism by the left of centre German Finance Minister tells us two things.
Yet more evidence of the Prime Minister's mendacity, this time courtesy of a softball interview with Alan Sugar (can you believe) in The Sun.
Posts
