Newsweek - National News, World News, Health, Technology, Entertainment and more... | Newsweek.com

Why It Matters

RSS
SPONSORED BY

Authors

Christopher Dickey

Christian Caryl

Melinda Liu

Stryker McGuire

Owen Matthews

Categories





Links

Featured Postings

How (Not) to Deal with the Somali Pirates

10:30 AM, November 26, 2008 | Comments (61)
By Barrett Sheridan Last week, the world cheered a little when an Indian warship said it had encountered a Somali pirate “mother ship” in the Gulf of Aden and, after being fired upon, blew it to smithereens . International shippers needed a reason to...

Fear and Loathing in Moscow

10:39 AM, October 24, 2008 | Comments (12)

'Holy Ignorance,' a French View

6:01 PM, October 17, 2008 | Comments (0)

Archives

See All from February
Previous
February 2008
Next
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
242526272829 
       
Full Post
Posted Monday, February 18, 2008 11:39 AM

Between the Rock and a Hard Place

Stryker McGuire
He was known, more than anything else, for his supposed economic competence. So what was British Prime Minister Gordon Brown doing standing before the TV cameras today and announcing the nationalization of Northern Rock, a failed mortgage lender? It's a complicated story, but as Brown rightly said it all leads back to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States. Still the Northern Rock affair, which has now forced the government to pull the trigger on what it calculated all along was the worst possible option, has been badly handled by Brown's Labour government since the debacle came to light last August. The "£100 Billion Gamble With Your Cash" takeover (as the Daily Mail put it) is the first nationalization in Britain since the bad old days of 1970s. Back then the Labour Party dug its own political grave and paved the way for Margaret Thatcher through its association with punishingly high taxes, steep unemployment and a plague of strikes. Brown knew that to nationalize the Rock would recall those times and threaten to undermine all that "New" Labour had done to rebrand itself as business-friendly and an ally, not an enemy, of mammoth financial interests in the City of London. As he ended the press conference and headed back to his office, Brown could be deemed fortunate in only one respect: he doesn't have to call an election for another two years.      
Advertisement
You must be a registered user to comment.  Click here to register.  Already a user?  Click here to login.

Member Comments

No Comments