John Lamb: Nothing like a crisis to give us something to talk about
Nov 4 2008 By John Lamb
The global economic downturn has made financial experts of us all.
Before you could say sub-prime crisis, the word Libor was on everyone’s lips at the local.
Libor, as we now all know, stands for the London Interbank Offered Rates. In other words, the rate at which banks lend money to each other.
Frankly, I had never heard of Libor until the evening our PEE (Pub Expert on Everything) proclaimed, long before the announcement by the Bank of England, that interest would be cut by 0.5 per cent.
Even though the reduction was obvious, he has modestly mentioned this prediction only every five minutes since the Monetary Policy Committee acted as he had predicted. Just out of interest, he’s also forecasting a further half per cent reduction on Thursday.
He’s even mentioned a full per cent cut to 3.5 per cent. Might be time to take a trip to your bookmaker.
However, if he again mentions the efficacy in macro economics, he’s likely to have his two pound change shoved down his throat when he next coughs up for a round.
In fact there’s a great deal coming out of the woodwork which could incense those of us who earn a crust at the daily grind.
The shenanigans of politicians and the super-rich make you wonder why we bother or worry about that mortgage or electricity bill or, more pointedly, our tax bills.
Both Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, and George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, had meetings with Russia’s richest man Oleg Deripaska while bobbing around the coast of Corfu on his yacht.
OK, some of us have been lucky enough to enjoy the hospitality of the wealthy but there’s usually a cost. Whether Lord Mandelson knew the Russian aluminium oligarch long before he implies or George Osborne tried to persuade him to part with just £50,000 of his £16.3 billion fortune for the Tory Party is somewhat immaterial.
What really gets the PEE’s back up is the thought of the privileged classes swanning about in the Med using the tax he ought to have paid were he not pretending to be out of work. Thankfully, he’s now preoccupied. As he approaches state retirement age he needs to fill in a few official forms that might reveal his reluctance to join the Chancellor’s tax club.
His view, however, is that what’s good for the likes of Mandelson on his friend’s yacht is good enough for him.
