Philippe Legrain

I debated the future of the euro with Josef Joffe, the editor of Die Zeit, on the Riz Khan show on Al Jazeera English on 20 May 2010.

I was interviewed on RTE Radio 1’s Today with Pat Kenny show today about Aftershock and prospects for Ireland’s economy. Listen to it here.

Sky News are reporting that a secret study commissioned by some of Britain’s biggest banks warns that tighter banking regulation could provoke a  double-dip recession. Yet again, the big banks are attempting to blackmail the rest of the country in order to protect their licence to gamble and make monopoly profits with government guarantees. Of […]

Goldman’s use of intelligence drawn from its unrivalled pool of market sources to trade on its own and its clients’ behalf – a strategy championed by Mr Blankfein – has been a competitive advantage. Bank executives speak of its ability to manage – even “embrace” – conflicts of interest that arise from its position at […]

It is outrageous that governments bailed out failed banks. There were better alternatives. But given that mistake, it is understandable that governments – and taxpayers – want to get their money back. The IMF has therefore proposed that G20 countries levy a tax on banks’ balance sheets, to pay for future bailouts or the recent […]

This is a more technical post. When financial panic spread even to sound emerging economies after Lehman collapsed in September 2008, the Fed responded by extending swap lines to central banks in Brazil, Korea, Mexico and Singapore, while the ECB provided them to Hungary and Poland. These unprecedented moves played a key role in quelling […]

Oliver Kamm at The Times, a man I respect a lot, argues in his blog that banks are not a “vested interest”. But unless I have misunderstood him, I think he is being too charitable to the banks. He argues that “the banks are not some unaccountable lobby seeking to superimpose itself on the public interest: they […]

Money quote: To this day it is hard to find fault with the conceptual framework of our [financial risk management] models as far as they go. Of course not.

Britain’s banks aren’t lending, which is strangling the economy. The package of measures to support lending to smaller businesses which the government announced yesterday will do some good. But it is not enough. As I have argued previously, the government should direct nationalised Northern Rock to step into the breach. Anatole Kaletsky endorses this position […]

In recent years, Western governments have voiced concerns about Asian governments’ vast sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) investing in Western companies. Some called this "investment protectionism" But as Western banks faced collapse, they were delighted to receive capital injections from Asian SWFs – and Western governments didn’t object. In a crisis, needs must. Now, though, Asia’s […]

(A) All domestic non-financial enterprises that currently have access to bank financing and whose loans, overdraft facilities, credit lines or whatever other financial arrangements expire during the coming year, have the right to an automatic one-year extension of the expiring arrangements on the same financial and non-financial terms as the expiring arrangements. This mandatory ‘creditor […]

The reason why the government had to rescue Britain’s banks is not that their shareholders and executives deserve special favours, but because businesses and jobs depend on the availability of credit. There is no public interest in propping up banks that won’t lend. For sure, banks should not be lending with reckless abandon as they […]

Banks would normally be wary of lending to someone whose liabilities were 50 times their net assets, but they happily lent to each other on that basis – until, one day, they stopped. If you want a one sentence explanation of the present crisis, that is it. From the FT.

The Guardian, 9 October 2008. The UK government’s measures will stave off economic collapse and get banks moving, but calling them a bail-out is misleading

The Guardian, 7 October 2008. If the government is bold and recapitalises the banks, Gordon Brown will reap a political dividend. Only ruin awaits indecision

Allowing Lloyds TSB to take over HBOS was an act of desperation: even though the merged entity would dominate the UK banking market, the government signalled that it would approve the merger in order to stop HBOS going under. But now that the government has stepped in with its bank recapitalisation and funding plan, wouldn’t […]

Tony Blair once said that the government was best when it was boldest. Gordon Brown is – finally – heeding that advice. The government’s three-pronged plan to shore up Britain’s banking system is bold and right. It is our best hope of pacifying the financial panic, getting credit flowing through the economy again and thus […]

What bank investors need from authorities is clarity. A concerted, pan-European drive to inject capital might provide it. As US fund manager John Hussman has suggested, that injection could be achieved via a “super-bond”, countable as capital and subordinate to customer deposits, but ranking ahead of both shareholders and even senior bondholders in the event […]