Snowmail: steward bankers
Updated on 22 February 2009
On tonight's show...
Krishnan here. The Gordon Brown soundbite of the day is that bankers must be stewards of our money not speculators with it. The PM is in Germany with other European leaders (meeting ahead of the G20 summit in April) where they have all pledged to make banking honest and open.
They claim that every bit of banking, investment and hedge funds will be properly regulated wherever they are in the world.
It is far from clear whether that is remotely deliverable, or whether it will help pull us out of recession. But it signifies action in an era in which politicians need to be seen to be doing something.
The next few days are going to be dominated by banking; RBS will reveal its financial situation and the scale of its losses, Lloyds is working out its bonuses, as are Barclays and HSBC, and on Thursday the government will unveil the most important thing of all: the details of its asset protection scheme.
This is the insurance scheme designed to cover the bad debts of those banks that take part, allowing them, in theory, to release more funds for new 'responsible' lending. So what does all that mean for those of us who don't live in the world of high finance?
Well, this morning Gordon Brown also signalled he never wants to see the return of 100 per cent mortgages whenever the credit market does start up again. He's asking the Financial Services Authority to look into how new requirements can be brought in to make the cost of 100 per cent mortgages reflect the true scale of risk.
I've been talking to the City Minister Paul Myners, who says we'll actually have to go back to the days of saving up 10 to 15 per cent deposits on our homes. For somebody on £25,000 a year, that means saving around £50,000 for a typical family home in the South East of England.
Lord Myners is now the man responsible for delivering the asset protection scheme (the thing being announced on Thursday) so I talked to him about that and whether the government will ever acknowledge its share of blame for what went wrong.
Investigation into 'racist' attack to be reviewed
In 2007, in broad daylight inside school grounds a 15-year-old boy was savagely beaten and left close to death. No teachers were there to stop the assault on Henry Webster. He believes it was a racial attack - he's white and was attacked by an Asian gang - but the culprits were not charged with racially motivated crime.
Henry's mother has spent the two years since the attack battling for an inquiry into the school's handling of the incident, and there will now be a serious case review. They also feel let down by those who decided not to bring race into the prosecution. Carl Dinnen went to meet her and her son.
'Strategic stalemate'?
Last week the Foreign Secretary David Miliband described the fight with the Taliban in some parts of Afghanistan as a 'strategic stalemate'. It was an unusually blunt and perhaps refreshingly honest assessment of the realities in Afghanistan.
But it came just as America decided to send in thousands more troops - many coming to the south where Britain has been in charge until now. So perhaps it is no surprise that the Commander of British forces in Helmand has told Channel 4 News it doesn't feel like stalemate to him.
Is it a real disagreement between the military and the politicians? Or a military chief understandably refusing to go along with pessimistic assessments of his troops' achievements? You decide when you watch it.
Jade and Jack marry
And Jade Goody has married Jack Tweed with all the glitz and glamour you might have expected. They are described by their PR Max Clifford as very happy. We'll bring you the details - although obviously not the pictures of the ceremony which have been sold for a substantial sum to somebody else.
See you at six thirty. I'll tweet any changes if you're on twitter (My login is Krishgm)
Best
Krishnan
