Today Jon Menon and Andrew MacAskill wrote an article for Bloomburg.com which suggested that had the Government not stepped in to swallow the debt thus saving both RBS and Lloyds a year ago today, then Britain could have faced a massive backlash from the public with widespread riots leading to the streets of London looking more like the streets of Basra. Commenting on remarks made by David Livingstone suggesting that "Bank failures would have forced the government to cancel police leave and deploy troops as the breakdown of the financial payments system threatened the ability of utilities to provide essential services" the authors suggest that the actions taken by the British Government were not only necessary but mandatory for keeping peace.
Are we to be convinced?
The answer to this question can only come after many years, with hindsight we will see if the decision made were necessary or even required, for today we are too close to the event itself to look back and make a valued judgments. So I guess we will just have to leave this question with time, and time itself will give us a response when it sees fit.
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