Royal Bank of Scotland has the power to print its own banknotes.
Royal Bank of Scotland also seems to be a bit short of money.
So why doesn’t Royal Bank of Scotland simply print some more banknotes to meet its bills?
After all, when the Bank of England does this it’s called “quantitative easing” and the Chancellor thinks it’s just a wonderful idea.
I can’t help feeling that there’s something missing from this though….
There is something almost comic (as well as the more obvious something enraging) about this from Alistair Darling.
Alistair Darling today defended his decision to allow Northern Rock to resume offering 90% mortgages, insisting the bank has learned from its mistakes.
Allowing Northern Rock to loan an extra £14bn over the next two years would help to kick-start the mortgage market, the chancellor insisted this morning.
He also confirmed that the bank, which was brought down by its reckless lending policy and reliance on wholesale credit, would be allowed to lend customers up to 90% of the value of their home. Most other lenders are unwilling to offer more than 75%.
Northern Rock of course went bust because it was offering greater loan to value numbers than anyone else: 125% in some cases. Thus it ended up with a very much higher proportion of dud loans than anyone else did.
And, of course, we’ve had our various “leaders” telling us that this was a very bad thing and how could the bankers have been so naughty?
Darling is now saying that this very same action, offering higher loan to value than anyone else, thus ending up with a larger number of dud loans, is a very good thing indeed and how could anyone be so naughty as to doubt his word?
Bad when it’s done privately and good when it’s done by a politician? Bad when it’s done with private money but good when done with our taxes?
The arrogance amazes…..