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Listed below are comments made by inoncom between Wednesday, 22nd July 2009 and Thursday, 1st October 2009.

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BAE: Can't pay, would like to pay 5:39pm on 01 Oct 2009 Like PorterRockwell (#37) I'm utterly amazed at the almost unanimous defence of corruption and bribery that fills up this comments thread.

http://www.knowingandmaking.com/2009/10/worrying-bizarre-defences-of-corruption.html

Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Lloyds: Mind the GAPS 1:51pm on 18 Sep 2009 This is clearly a power play by the management of the bank. Raising new capital is not in the interests either of existing shareholders OR the public. The only people who will benefit are the executives:
http://www.knowingandmaking.com/2009/09/agency-problems-at-lloyds.html
QE: More to do? 04:02am on 07 Aug 2009 And those who say QE is the same as creating inflation and devaluing the currency, you are in good company. Virtually all economists, and everyone at the Bank of England, would completely agree with you. This is not a controversial point and they would not regard it as a criticism!

QE does not enrich banks - quite the reverse. If the banks hang onto the money, they will make losses on it. They can only make a profit from QE if they lend the money out to businesses - which is exactly what we want to encourage.

I do agree that the Bank should consider buying corporate bonds with its money instead of gilts; but even if it doesn't, the policy will still help.
QE: More to do? 03:58am on 07 Aug 2009 Stephanie - in your last QE posting you suggested that it might be the stock of QE that mattered and not the rate at which it increases. If this were the Bank's view, would they be making a point of the slower rate of spend this time round?

I suspect that the Bank believes QE has a behavioural/psychological effect as well as its direct effect on the money supply and on the incentives of banks. It's fascinating to analyse the effect on expectations and the "wrong-footing" idea, but we can guess, second-guess and fifth-guess them; I think it will be hard to know the Bank's thinking for sure until the minutes are published. Or even then...
What was HBOS doing? 3:28pm on 05 Aug 2009 #80, #101:

Yes, I agree this is a valid concern for Lloyds though much less than it was 9 months ago when the markets were really frozen up.

The government and Bank of England have stepped in with various liquidity schemes which are available to temporarily replace the wholesale lending; and those wholesale markets themselves are much more open than they were at the turn of the year.

Despite this, as Robert points out, Lloyds is still scaling back its lending in order to close the gap. But one could argue that horse has bolted now, the government stepped in and fixed the short-term emergency, and Lloyds is busy trying to correct last year's problem. Perhaps they shouldn't be doing damage to their business (and the commercial loans market) trying to fix a problem that is no longer urgent.

LIBOR did rise substantially for a few months but has now fallen most of the way back, so it isn't a major problem for Lloyds to finance this gap at present. Of course it would still be sensible for them to try to attract more deposits (maybe now that people aren't so keen to put their money in Iceland). Clearly things are moving in the right direction and I hope that they don't disrupt the economy any further by trying to move too fast.
What was HBOS doing? 12:12pm on 05 Aug 2009 #51: the £223bn is not the gap between assets and liabilities. It is the gap between lending and deposits - a gap that is filled by short-term borrowing from the wholesale markets and the Government.

So this is not a black hole in the balance sheet, though it does make Lloyds heavily dependent on funds which are not guaranteed to remain available. Like taking out an overdraft to buy a car - the car is a long-term asset which can't easily be sold on, but the overdraft might be withdrawn after a year.
Are banks doing enough for us? 6:26pm on 03 Aug 2009 You should always be suspicious when someone tells you that they can't decide between two possible causes because it's "a bit of both". Of course it is possible for two things to just coincidentally happen at the same time: but in a crisis such as this, which has hit with such speed and correlation, it's highly unlikely.

In this case there's a much simpler explanation for the fall in lending:

http://www.knowingandmaking.com/2009/08/supply-and-demand-bank-loans.html
BT: A blacker pension hole 1:34pm on 30 Jul 2009 Nice scare story!

But all of these figures are perfectly normal and actually there is very little to worry about. If I told you I was drowning in a million pounds of debt, it might sound bad. Until you realise the debt is just a mortgage on a two million pound house.

http://www.knowingandmaking.com/2009/07/panic-no-waitdont-panic.html
If markets don't work, what will? 11:21am on 28 Jul 2009 This article isn't a bad summary of the last twenty years of economic theory. The fascinating thing is that it completely turns the old "government versus market", left-right debate on its head.

The paradox is that these problems are intrinsic to unregulated markets - and thus, new regulations can in fact make markets more free!

http://www.knowingandmaking.com/2009/07/twenty-years-of-economics.html
Does size matter? 8:20pm on 22 Jul 2009 Calm down folks. Is there any point asking you to debate the issues instead of shouting at each other and at the government? The comments here used to be better than on Peston's blog but I'm worried now.

The most fascinating news in this article is that the Bank of England is hinting at targeting cash GDP instead of inflation. If true, this could be quite a revolution. Scott Sumner, an American economist, has written some detailed and very interesting proposals about this:

http://www.knowingandmaking.com/2009/07/is-bank-of-england-targeting-nominal.html

And John_From_Hendon - if you want to know some examples when printing money was a positive step, have a look at Dr Sumner's blog. 1933 would be one good example...

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