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What the papers say about the bail out...
Evening Standard9 Oct 2008
Peter Riddell in The Times:
The banking package is spectacular and unprecedented, but Alistair Darling claimed that the impact on the public finances could be "exceptional, and mostly temporary". That depends on whether the package works.
Edward Heathcoat Amory in the Daily Mail:
When we have finished speculating about how much extra tax we might be paying as a result of yesterday's bank bail-out, we should turn our attention to another way in which the market turmoil has left us significantly poorer than a year ago the huge fall in the value of our pension funds.
Andrew Hill in the Financial Times:
Don't let the banks' initial welcome for the plan for part-nationalisation mislead you. They want and need these measures, it's true. But the proposals will also have a dramatic impact on the way in which the UK's biggest banks function. Not everybody doing the welcoming will be around when the impact becomes apparent.
Hamish McRae in The Independent:
The world's monetary authorities are at last really trying to reassert their power over the financial markets. They have not yet succeeded and they will have to do more, maybe much more, but eventually they will win. Or at least they always have in the past 75 years. You have to think that the world is facing something akin to the Great Depression of the Thirties to believe that they will fail.
Edmund Conway in The Daily Telegraph:
Having tried almost every other weapon in its arsenal, the Bank of England has gone nuclear. The co-ordinated interest rate cut with the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank is not just unprecedented in its scale and surprise, but is designed to jolt the economy out of its terrifying downward spiral.
Nils Pratley in The Guardian:
Is it a £50 billion or a £500 billion rescue package? It makes no difference. All the chips will be committed if necessary. So thank goodness the scheme is well-designed. It addresses banks' three big problems capital, liquidity and funding. In that regard, it is better than Hank Paulson's $700 billion bail-out plan in the US.
Ian King in The Sun:
The co-ordinated interest rate cut is great news. The US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England have acted decisively to react to the paralysis which was starting to infect world markets.
Kevin Maguire in the Daily Mirror:
Gambles don't come much bigger than Gordon Brown betting £500 billion on saving high street banks.
Chuck in an emergency interest rate cut and the Prime Minister played a couple of aces.
