Former Secretary of State John Denham yesterday accused ministers of spending too much time “cosying up” to foreign firms like Google, at the expense of home-grown companies.

Instead, they should quiz Mr Lynch on “why it is so difficult to get the long-term finance they need… to become global leaders themselves,” rather than selling to overseas rivals, Mr Denham argued.

Autonomy floated in London years ago. Had a ready, willing and able source of finance.

But when fools come in and offer 59% over market price for something then it’s churlish not to take HP’s money. This is now $10 billion that is sitting in investment pots and ready to be recycled into the next round of bright looking start ups.

John Denham is a twat.

Economists had pinned their hopes on improvements in the all-important services sector, which accounts for three quarters of the national output, but were let down by the embattled banking industry. Output in financial and insurance services contracted by 0.8pc to fall back to levels not seen since 2005.

No, that’s not the only cause of the recession. But it is contributing.

Specifically attempting to shrink one rather important part of the economy while growing the entire economy is one of those things that it’s really rather hard to do…..

That’s because the threat of a disorderly Greek default – which could still take place inside the euro – has the potential to trigger a cascade of bank runs and knock-on crises across the eurozone whose impact could dwarf the Lehmans crash of 2008.

OK, it’s Seumas on economics so obviously it’s wrong.

But I’m not sure that I actually get it. Why would a Greek default knock over the banking system?

The private sector holders (ie, the banks) of Greek sovereign debt all too a 70% haircut only a few weeks ago. I’ve not checked but I think the new debt issued now trades at 50% or less of par.

So the purely private sector effect of a Greek Government default is going to be trivial.

Sure, all the Greek banks go bust in such a default. But there cannot be a single European bank that has not written down any such Greek banking “assets” to something equivalent to the value ofnthe sovereign paper, ie spit.

And it’s not as if the banks haven’t had 3 years to prepare for this either.

The ghastly losses will be in the official accounts: the ECB, the EFSF and so on, where Greek sovereign paper is being valued at par (I think). And the Target 2 system will go kablooie: but that again is central banks, not private ones.

As far as I can see, and I’m sure I’m overstating this but still, the risks and costs of a Greek default have now been almost entirely socialised. The private sector banks have already taken their lumps, written down their Greek assets and the difference between the current 15% of original par value and 0% in disorderly default is, umm, not very much.

Agreed, it all becomes rather more scary if Spain and Italy etc follow but Greece itself I just can’t see it.

So, where am I going wrong?

So you think you’re having a hard time, what with the cuts and the scrapping of public services and those threats of losing your job? Well, I bring good news. The austerity we’ve heard so much time about – this historic, unparalleled slashing of spending – is all made up. David Cameron is simply fudging his figures. Those Jobcentre staff haven’t been made redundant. And remember the Sure Start centre that you thought had shut? Why, it’s still open, and bursting with toddlers.

This magical thinking comes from one of the world’s biggest money brokers, Tullett Prebon. It argued last week that Britain’s austerity is “mendacious” spin, and a “con” and, in case you hadn’t got the message and been bathed in sufficient spittle, “bare-faced deception”.

Gosh, that’s interesting. For Tellett Prebon’s figures were in fact accurate. There hasn’t been much cutting of total spending and much of the deficit reduction has been from tax rises.

But it’s the final trick that gives away what the austerity deniers are really up to. The Tullett research lumps together departmental budgets, which are almost all being slashed, as Theresa May and her police officers can tell you, with total government expenditure, which includes welfare benefits and repayments on already outstanding loans. Since there’s not much any chancellor can do about debts racked up by his predecessors, what’s the one group that leaves to be hit? That’s right: the disabled, the unemployed and the others on benefits.

Well, yes, that’s the point that is being made. There have not been any massive cuts to total expenditure. Much the same amount is in fact being spent. It’s just that, as you say, the last lot spent too much and so those debts must be paid and departmental budgets cut.

That is, Tullett Prebon is actually correct. Total spending has not been slashed.

Yet the thing is this: there is a part of Britain that isn’t experiencing austerity. It’s the banks that have received £325bn of free money in the past couple of years, as part of the Bank of England’s quantitative-easing programme.

And that’s a very strange thing to say indeed. QE just isn’t free money. A bank, or anyone else, cannot knock on hte BoE’s door, ask for 50 p for a cup os tea and walk away with a few billions. They have to sell something to the bank to get the cash. A gilt, a corporate bond perhaps. This just isn’t “free”.

But then, as I’ve said before, The Guardian doesn’t do itself many favours by having an historian writing its economics leaders.

Facebook shares were expected to soar on Friday, but they shares finished just 0.6pc above their $38 offer price. Today’s 12pc fall implies bankers got the flotation price wrong.

The company, the extant shareholders and the bankers got 12 pc more money for their shares on Friday than they were worth on Monday.

In what world is this a failure?

They were trying to sell, recall?

The Serious Fraud Office warned Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz that a high-profile investigation into their activities could drag on for “five to 10 years” if they didn’t come to a financial settlement.

As a purely personal opinion it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that there had been something “interesting” bout the financing of the property empire.

However, that’s something for the SFO to prove under the law as it stnds and that they ain’t managed to do. To the point of haing judges shouting at them for lying misleading them about the evidence presented to gain search warrants.

But then to say, come on, cough up £50 million to charity or we spend 5 years investigating you. Umm, no maties, fuck off.

Perhaps we do have a system where the process itself is the punishment but we most certainly should not have such a system. Whichever civil servant suggested this repellent idea should be hung with the intestines of whoever approved it.

In France, the authorities are racing to avoid having to rescue Caisse Centrale du Credit Immobilier (3CIF) after Moody’s downgraded the mortgage lender last week, warning it could become totally reliant on taxpayer support within months.

The lender is one of France’s largest mortgage providers and is owned by a collection of local authorities and mutuals, giving it implicit government support.

We’ve all sorts telling us that we shouldn’t have shareholder banks, that it should be mutuals and local politicals running the banking system.

In Spain it’s the cajas, which are exactly that, which are falling over. In France it’s the bit which is mutuals and politicals which is falling over…..

Even at the very best this isn’ty really an advertisement for running the British banking system through mutuals and politicals, is it?

Do recall what the free market argument actually is. Not that markets are perfect, just that other organisational systems can be even worse.

Bondholders, who were forced to accept losses of around 75pc on their debt two months ago or lose everything, hired lawyers to claim they were “fraudulently misled” after Athens repaid €435m to debtors who resisted the restructuring.

The bondholders who got paid out in full were the people holding English law bonds, not Greek law ones. That is, bonds that the Greek Parliament could not retrospectively alter the terms of as they did the Greek law ones.

Shows something of the value of this rule of law malarkey really, doesn’t it?

Moody’s downgraded 26 Italian lenders on Monday night saying the slump itself is the killer, joining a chorus of voices warning that too much austerity may be self-defeating. “Banks are vulnerable to the renewed recession in Italy, given their already elevated levels of problem loans and weakened profitability,” it said. Moody’s expects the economy to contract 1.9pc this year.

The Italian Banking Association ABI accused Moody’s of an “irresponsible, incomprehensible, and unjustifiable” smear. “Moody’s decision is an attack on Italy, its companies, its families and its citizens,” it said, calling on the EU authorities to clamp down “severely” on rating agencies.

For if there were no Moody’s pointing such things out then such things would not be happening, would they?

The need for intervention comes four years after the UK was bailing out its banks, laden with toxic sub-prime debt. At the time Spaniards were told they had the world’s best central bank – one that had banned Spanish banks from buying dubious US mortgage derivatives.

But the scramble to rescue Bankia has shed light on Spain’s own version of toxic debt – the vast amount of money loaned to builders, developers and land speculators during a decade-long property boom.

Spain didn’t have any of those derivatives. And the big three commercial banks are just fine. It’s actually the regional, formerly mutually owned, cajas that are in the shit. You know, the ones run as not for profits by hte local politicians taking the very real needs of local industry and society into account?

Now, did the derivatives, the too big to fail etc, have any effect at all? Sure they did, but they didn’t cause either the crash or the subsequent recession. The pricking of a property bubble did. As we can see because we’ve got the same thing, the pricking of a property bubble, causing the same problems, the evisceration of the banking system and recession, without the derivatives, the too big to fail or the investment banking bit.

Which, of course, means that all those screaming about investment banking, derivatives etc, are simply wrong. They weren’t the cause of the problem and banning them won’t stop it in the future.

Oh, and local, regional, mutual banks run by local politicians with a very real democratic interest in the local economy and industry: they don’t seem to be an answer either.

Chuka Umunna, the shadow Business Secretary, told The Daily Telegraph Wonga’s move was “a damning indictment” of the British banking system and the failures of the coalition Government to get cash to successful firms.

“Look at the rates of interest Wonga is charging. This is not cheap money,” he said.

“It is such a damning indictment of the failure of Government to get the banking sector working that an outfit like Wonga feels it can step into this market and that there will be a plentiful supply of customers.”

New entrant into the market, offering sorely needed, as Chuka says, business credit. And Chuka complains. Presumably because it’s not one of Chuka’s ideas that the problem be solved by a new market entrant.

What he should be doing of course is applauding the market entrance: and urging other firms to do so too.

The way credit unions operate goes against the orthodoxies of finance.

Well, not so much.

Actually, it’s pretty much the basics of banking and has been for a number of centuries.

Lend money at interest to those you think will pay it back. Borrow the money at a lower interest rate from a different group of people. The second group are your depositors.

That plus borrowing short and lending long (ie, you tend to lend the money out for longer periods than you borrow it for) is banking.

“Unlike the banks, it can only lend money that it actually holds: its deposits total about £1.5m, and there’s £1m on its loan book.”

This is also true of any bank. Loans must equal deposits plus capital. And the big banks make very sure of this too, they balance their books at the end of every banking day.

The difference is that if a big bank has lent out more that day than it has taken in in deposits then it goes and borrows it from another bank: that is, it gets a deposit from another bank to make the books balance.

This is known as the interbank market and it’s worth about £20 trillion a year in movements of money.

That interbank market is just another way of getting more deposits.

It is true that credit unions don’t tend to use the interbank market but there’s no theoretical reason (nor legal as far as I know) that they cannot. It’s a choice they make.

“Now, BANKs, they don’t work like that. If a bank has £10 it can lend £80 pounds. It doesn’t make sense but its the law. It’s called leverage.”

This is not true. The banking system as a whole, because of fractional reserve banking, does work out that way. But it is not true for any one individual bank. One individual bank must match loans against deposits and capital.

BTW, just so you know, baby eating neoliberal bastards like me, you know, near fascists in pursuit of capitalism…..we’re all in favour of credit unions. Mutuals of all types indeed. You want to organise your affairs that way then you just go right ahead. It’s your money and your life and we’re the guys who applaud your liberty and freedom to do as you wish with both.

“She’d been brought up in care and had virtually no idea of what officialspeak calls financial literacy.”

Something of a condemnation of the State there, don’t you think? If, when responsible for the entire education of a child, they fail so badly then why do we insist that said State must be responsible for part of the education of all children?

Trillium Asset Management, LLC is the oldest independent investment advisor devoted exclusively to sustainable and responsible investing. With over $1 billion in assets under management, Trillium has been managing equity and fixed income investments for high net worth individuals, foundations, endowments, religious institutions, and other nonprofits, since 1982. A leader in shareholder advocacy and public policy work, Trillium’s goal is to deliver both impact and performance to its investors.

30 years, one, just the one, $ billion under management.

Even what with being trendy n’all?

Blimey, there are VC funds that get that on day 1

“From the start of the crisis, central banks provided emergency loans but these amounted to little more than holding a sheet in front of the emperor to conceal the nakedness of the banks. They didn’t solve the underlying problem – banks needed not loans but injections of shareholders’ capital in order to be able to absorb losses from the risky investments they had made. From the beginning of 2008, we at the Bank of England began to argue that UK banks needed extra capital – a lot of extra capital, possibly £100 billion or more. It wasn’t a popular message.”

Sir Mervyn said the “bold action” to largely nationalise RBS and Lloyds Banking Group took another nine months.

“That bold action in October 2008 could have happened sooner,” he said. “Bailing out the banks came too late to prevent the financial crisis from spilling over into the world economy. The realisation of the true state of the banking system led to a collapse of confidence around the world and a deep global recession. Over 25 million jobs disappeared worldwide. And unemployment in Britain rose by over a million.”

Politicians: even when doing the right thing they manage to do it at the wrong time.

And stopping the banking system from falling over was indeed the right thing. Maybe more shareholders should have lost their money as well, but doing it 9 months late isn’t very good, is it?

In this respect it corresponds to other global powers. Despite its trumpeted reforms, the International Monetary Fund remains under the control of the United States and the former colonial powers. All constitutional matters still require an 85% share of the vote. By an inexplicable oversight, the United States retains 16.7%, ensuring that it possesses a veto over subsequent reforms. Belgium still has eight times the votes of Bangladesh, Italy a bigger share than India, and the United Kingdom and France between them more voting power than the 49 African members.

It’s a bank. With shareholders. The shareholders put up the capital for the bank and they get voting rights in proportion to hte amount of capital they put up. It’s very, very, simple.

“In a way bankers are Marx’s dream, it’s the workers getting the fruits of their labours. It’s funny that the left is usually angry at shareholders, for taking money out of companies and thereby bringing down workers’ salaries. Yet with the banks they want shareholders to press the banks to do exactly that, and curb pay.

The London arm of the great vampire squid paid only £4.1m in corporation tax to the Treasury last year. Despite pocketing £1.9bn in pre-tax profits.

Lord Blankfein’s investment bank received a tax bill of £422.3m for 2011 but has put off paying 99pc of it until next year.

Umm, isn’t corporation tax always paid in arrears?

You know, you’ve got to get to the end of the tax year before you can calculate what the bill is?

I can imagine that there’s some form of pre-payment scheme, HMRC insisting that they get a chunk earlier, based upon perhaps an assumption that this year’s profits will be similar to last year’s. You know, like with self-assessment.

But you might think that a bank could have losses to carry forward after the worst financial crisis for nigh on a century?

So, help me out here. Is this just some journo not understanding the basics of the tax system or is the Vampire Squid actually doing something nefarious?

The current estimate of the eventual loss that taxpayers will be left with from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is $60bn, according to a report from the watchdog for the programme.

“It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit,” said Christy Romero, the inspector general for TARP.

OK, so we’re going to get all sorts of shouting that we’ve lost money bailing out the banks therefore neoliberalism blah blah.

But that’s not quite true:

The White House estimates that the capital injections into the country’s banks have reaped a profit of $205bn for taxpayers, but has forecast an overall loss for a bail-out that was engineered by former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Bailing out the banks made tonnes of money.

Taxpayers are still owed $119bn from TARP, with the majority of that still tied up in the rescue of insurer AIG, carmaker General Motors and mortgage lender Ally Financial.

Would anyone like to bet that in the end, once everything has been totted up, it’ll be GM which is the only loss in the portfolio?

Which would be a very different story from neoliberalism blah blah, wouldn’t it?

The extraordinary story of how a former cashier at a Wickes DIY store became governor of a Nigerian state and embezzled £50 million to live “like royalty” was set out before a packed courtroom today.

No doubt the usual suspects will be telling us how this shows we must crack down on offshore as he did indeed stash the money offshore.

However, given that he’s currently in court for sentencing for the thefts it would appear that we can catch them without cracking down on offshore.

Under Nigerian law, Ibori was immune from prosecution during his two terms as governor,

Might be worth changing that part of the Nigerian code though….