October 29th, 2010 If you only ever see one film about the financial crisis of October 2008, you should make it Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job. Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Katherine Monk said that, unlike Oliver Stone’s Wall Steel Money Never Sleeps, this film is likely to “light a Molotov in your mind“. The producer [...]
October 28th, 2010 William K Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missourri, and the senior regulator during the US Savings and Loan crisis is, in my view, one of the sharpest commentators on the US financial crisis. He has an uncanny ability to cut through the crap that keeps emanating from [...]
October 27th, 2010 This round-table event organized by the AEI (American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research) may be long but it’s well worth watching if you have even the faintest interest in the future of banking and economics. I’ve just watched the video and found parts of it frankly terrifying. If you believe these [...]
October 11th, 2010 BBC Scotland’s Trust Me I’m A Banker will be aired on BBC1 Scotland at 7.30pm tonight. I was interviewed for the programme on whether the Graeme Shankland / Bank of Scotland Integrated Finance deal — which saw the ownership of a troublesome private equity portfolio amassed by HBOS at the peak of [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 10th, 2010 Lloyds Banking Group’s executive director of wholesale banking, Truett Tate, has defended alleged “rewards for failure” for a team of 20 Bank of Scotland dealmakers, closely associated with the reckless lending practices of the subsequently state-rescued bank. In July this year, Lloyds, which bought HBOS [...]
October 8th, 2010 Here’s an amusing mash-up of prime minister David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference, held in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Wednesday, October 6th. It’s a major improvement on Gordon Browns’ Gangsta Rap.
By: Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 3rd, 2010 A former HBOS banker who has been linked to an alleged money-laundering scandal was arrested and bailed last week by the economic crime unit of Thames Valley Police. In the first arrest of a financier on suspicion of criminal behaviour from the UK’s state-rescued banking [...]
Blog post revised and retitled October 3rd, 2010 A fourth person has been arrested in relation to Thames Valley Police’s investigation into “corruption and large-scale fraud in connection with HBOS”. [Note: comments on this post have now been disabled and earlier comments from witnesses have been removed as a result of the police investigation "Operation [...]
October 2nd, 2010 Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, recently declared the European sovereign debt crisis was over. He told the Wall Street Journal, “I believe that the debt crisis affecting Spain, and the euro zone in general, has passed.” But Zapatero may be being hopelessly optimistic. A common fear is that the vehicle created [...]