The loss of money by the banks is a wonder to behold. How many boardroom members have lost their jobs as a result of this monumental blundering? Nobody in charge can really say they did not know they were taking a huge risk. At the root of the trouble is that the banks have been lending money for people to buy land. LAND IS NOT WEALTH. The primary value of land is its rental, which is a residual...

The anniversary of the Northern Rock crash is just coming up. A Daily Telegraph article analyses the events leading up to it. If money is fed into the land market, for this is what happened, the price will inevitably bubble up. And no regulation will stop it, short of a tax reform which introduces the right form of land value taxation. How long will it take for this to be understood?

Tim Congdon was a member of the Treasury Panel of Independent Forecasters (the so-called wise men) which advised the last Conservative government between 1992 and 1997. He writes “In evidence to the House of Commons in February last year I warned that by the spring of 2008 the Bank of England would be “in quite serious trouble… Why was I so worried in early 2007? And what had the...

The Treasury is preparing a radical rescue plan for the housing market which may involve pumping billions of pounds into the stricken mortgage markets. Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, has asked his leading advisers to investigate a plan to provide government support for lenders until the financial crisis has abated. The proposal is being investigated ahead of the completion of Sir James Crosby’s...

For an explanation of how the present credit crisis originated, click on this link. Mortgages were being packaged, good and bad together, and sold on to investors, just as a shifty street market trader might sell boxes of apples with the good ones on top and rotten ones underneath. It has to be said that a lot of these “investors” were being remarkably stupid or naive not to check to...