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muriel_volestrangler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Feb-15-09 10:59 AM
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Blame Brown: Revenge of the whistleblower
Paul Moore, the former head of risk at HBOS, told the IoS that he has more than 30 potentially incendiary documents which he will send to MPs on the Treasury Select Committee. He says they disprove Mr Brown's claim about the reasons for HBOS's catastrophic losses – now estimated to be nearly £11bn – and show that it was the reckless lending culture, easy credit and failed regulation of the Brown years that led directly to the implosion of British banks.

After Mr Moore's explosive testimony at the MPs' banking hearing, the Prime Minister had denied the former executive's central charges and said that HBOS's difficulties were due to its flawed business model. Mr Moore says his documents refute this and prove the cause of the crisis can be laid at Gordon Brown's feet. He believes Mr Brown's failure to intervene over the reckless lending undertaken by all the banks over the past decade means he should go. "The failure goes right to the heart of the system – to the internal supervisory system and right to the top of government."
...
Mr Moore's evidence to the Treasure Select Committee last week led to the resignation from the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the City regulator, of the ex-HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby, who dismissed Mr Moore from the bank after his warnings. In an exclusive interview with the IoS, Mr Moore revealed his documents contain all the evidence to support allegations he made to the HBOS board, which have been strongly denied by the bank and KPMG, the auditors brought in to investigate Mr Moore's claims. Yesterday, Mr Moore said his documents will "put to bed the idea that the KPMG report can be relied upon by Mr Brown, Sir James, the FSA and any other of the HBOS directors on the board at the time".

He says the papers – which he has kept from his time in his post as head of risk, from 2002 to 2005 – show that HBOS was involved in a huge sales drive to win market share which ultimately led to its collapse. Mr Moore claims that the "driven sales culture" was led by Sir James, and this, plus the "staggering failure" of the Government to manage the economy, had forced him to speak out. "Brown swaggers around holding himself out as the economic saviour of the world with a level of hubris that defies belief. But does he ever acknowledge that it was he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, who presided functionally over the economic strategy that got us into this mess in the first place?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blame-brown-revenge-of-the-whistleblower-1622467.html


And Labour are just 25% in a poll now - Lib Dems 22%, Tories 41%: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brown-adviser-joins-tories-as-labour-slumps-1622470.html
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non sociopath skin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Feb-15-09 12:02 PM
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1. But fear not. NuLab is alive and well and living in the Tory Party.
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Anarcho-Socialist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Feb-15-09 02:15 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. An interesting switch
considering that Freud's private welfare policy is actually imploding, leaving the Department of Work and Pensions with a mess.

No doubt he'd deliver similar results under a Cameron administration.
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fedsron2us Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Feb-15-09 12:23 PM
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2. The only thing currently going for Brown
is the fact that everywhere else in Europe the economic news is dire

The debt markets are pricing in a possible Irish debt default

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5733723.ece

Meanwhile the Austrian banks have massive potential debt exposure to Russia and Eastern Europe

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4623525/Failure-to-save-East-Europe-will-lead-to-worldwide-meltdown.html

Even allowing for the Torygraph's Ambrose Evan-Pritchards tendency to overhype any bad news from the Eurozone, things do not look good.

A blow out in the Treasury bond market as in 1931 now looks a real risk. If that happens a long term Global Depression looks nailed on.

Although Brown has royally screwed up the UK banking system by his appallingly lax supervision of the credit markets he is right when he claims this a global economic catastrophe. The shame is that he could have done much, much more to prevent it.
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Anarcho-Socialist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Feb-15-09 02:05 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. The Euro seems a blessing and a curse for Ireland
on the one hand, Ireland won't see a run on its currency a la Iceland. But on the other, the Euro's relative high worth is seeing money pour out of Ireland into the UK, as RoI residents go on shopping trips to the Six Counties where a weak Sterling is proving attractive.
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Anarcho-Socialist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Feb-15-09 02:17 PM
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5. It's a shame that Vince Cable couldn't take over the leadership permanently
He's been right most of the time, and no Lib Dem leader has been able to connect with the public the way he has since Charles Kennedy.
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