The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Bank of England: Annual taxpayer subsidy to UK banks is GBP50 billion

In a brilliant paper, entitled "The $100 billion question", on the 'too-big-to-fail' banking problem by the Bank of England, the very bright Andy Haldane approximates the value of the annual fiscal subsidy to UK banks:

"Table 4 shows the estimated value of that subsidy for the same sample of UK and global banks, again between 2007 and 2009. For UK banks, the average annual subsidy for the top five banks over these years was over £50 billion -roughly equal to UK banks’ annual profits prior to the crisis. At the height of the crisis, the subsidy was larger still. For the sample of global banks, the average annual subsidy for the top five banks was just less than $60 billion per year. These are not small sums."
at 7:39 AM