Back to Gold and Bonds for the Future
His diagnosis of Northern Rock
If, though, Northern Rock does finally expire, as looks likely, the Bank of England could become one of Britain's largest property owners.
is about right, I think.
Solveig is hopping up and down here and saying why (she's too much the lady to say wtf) don't they have a National Housing Bank (as Norway does, in case you didn't infer that).
Personally (as a 50% Dane) I incline towards the way the Danes have done it
Is it Done Better in Denmark
Simple, pragmatic, and it works.
Their system pools risk and liquidity and minimises the take of the intermediary better than any other system I've seen.
Of course:
(a) it's still debt, and it is in fact possible to create quasi Equity (current REIT's being an imperfect example);
(b) who needs intermediaries anyway? "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Nationalisation is so very socialist and anti-reform.
Private enterprise always works better.
As in - er - 1929. And in the 80s with S+L.
And now.
There was a banking crisis in Norway in 1990/91 due to lax lending from the mid 1980's on. One of the casualties was the venerable Christiania Kreditkassen.
The origin of that crisis dated back to 1984, when the dropping of lending limitations combined with very low interest rates led to a vast expansion of debt among Norwegian households and businesses. Households were not able to meet their repayments, and bankruptcies among companies increased when macroeconomic policies were tightened in response to rising inflation. In 1990 Christiania Kreditkassen and the third-largest commercial bank, Fokus Bank, were almost brought to insolvency. In 1991, to prevent a confidence crisis, the government created a bank insurance fund that provided resources for the country's largest commercial banks. As a result, the state became a major shareholder in these banks.
Households were not able to meet their repayments, and bankruptcies among companies increased when macroeconomic policies were tightened in response to rising inflation. In 1990 Christiania Kreditkassen and the third-largest commercial bank, Fokus Bank, were almost brought to insolvency.
In 1991, to prevent a confidence crisis, the government created a bank insurance fund that provided resources for the country's largest commercial banks. As a result, the state became a major shareholder in these banks.
Under State ownership (100% in the case of Kreditkasse) the bank was nursed back to health and of course therefore had to be sold off to the private sector.
Problem Solved
It's now part of the well-known and innovative Nordic bank - Nordea.
But note that the process of the sale was hugely controversial in Norway since the sale attracted at least four bids from throughout Scandinavia, and the fierce Norwegian instinct for independence came to the fore.
This
Global Capitalism meets National Spirit..
Finnish academic study of the transaction, and particularly its representation in the Scandinavian Press, was a nugget I found on the web, and is probably worth a Diary on its own "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Isn't that Colman's postulate of Cycle of Maximum Profit?
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
