“It is just as if [then Chancellor] Norman Lamont had personally thrown entire hospitals and schools into the sea all afternoon.”
- Central
Banking magazine, on the UK’s defence of Sterling during the ERM crisis.
“When I was young, people called
me a gambler. As the scale of my operations increased I became known as a
speculator. Now I am called a banker. But I have been doing the same thing all
the time.”
- Sir Ernest Cassel, private banker to King Edward VII.
Last
week we learned just how close we came to the brink. The Bank of England
confirmed that both the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland – the
Caledonian reputation for the prudent stewardship of money being perhaps modestly
over-rated ? – came within minutes of
closing down their UK banking operations in October last year. It also
disclosed for the very first time in public the existence of a £62bn emergency
loan extended to the banks as lender of last resort.
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