'Darling's straight talk'

[Joe Chi Minh]

In tonight's Talk of the Town column, in the Edinburgh Evening News, this interesting snippet appeared:

In his new book about the world financial crisis, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson resorts to four-letter words to describe the then Chancellor Alistair Darling's decision to to veto plans for Barclay's to take over the failing Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers.

But Mr Darling used his appearance at the Book Festival to put his side of the argument, though more politely. He said it was the US government's failure to bail out Lehmans back in 2008 which had precipitated the crisis.

"A Republican administration had just nationalised the two big housing corporations. America is a country where they think Tories are Communists - I think they did not feel they had enough political capital to nationalise Lehmans. Over that weekend there was some discussion that Barclays might take over Lehmans. I was rung up by Hank Paulson to ask what our view was.

"I said there was no way a British bank was going to acquire an American bank. If no American bank wanted to buy it, that raised some questions in my mind."

The former Chancellor added: "My guess is, if I'd allowed that, I wouldn't be sitting here tonight, or if I was, I would be in the stocks. It would have been just abolutely mad."

[Art_from_Ark]

1. I really don't think that "America is a country where they think

Tories are Communists", especially when their party is referred to by its official name, the Conservative Party. However, I remember a few US television programs from the '70s that equated Communists with the Labour Party.