The full internal review into how effectively the Financial Services Authority supervised Northern Rock won't be made public until some time next month. However, the summary published yesterday just about says it all.
LAST Wednesday, Bear Stearns, with all the brass-knuckle arrogance with which it had always gone about its business, was still insisting its book value was around $84 a share.
When the CBI director-general advised the Chancellor to respond to current economic turbulence by delivering a six-paragraph, do-nothing budget speech this Wednesday, some legacy items from Gordon Brown's final budget last March were clearly not up for renegotiation.
EARLIER this decade, when oil was trading at around $60 a barrel, most Big Oil strategists were still expecting the price to fall back to somewhere between $30 and $40 before too long. Not any more.
IT is a European curiosity. One of only two doubly-landlocked nation states, anywhere on planet earth. Home to just 34,000 people. An Alpine principality whose constitutional independence stretches back over 200 years.
FINDINGS from the latest ICM poll for the Guardian illustrate, perfectly, the tax dilemma facing today's politicians. In the space of one turbulent month, this survey finds economic gloom spreading fast. Voters no longer confident about the future are now in the majority.
I DON'T know about you, but I'm increasingly confused about what's really happening in the economy. The headlines are more and more downbeat. However, I keep meeting people who tell me demand in their own businesses is holding up surprisingly well. Even through a dark, wet January.
The auction of what is left of Northern Rock is, like much else in this sorry saga, a process with bewilderingly few reliable precedents. Would-be buyers, far from being locked in
a tense bidding war, are all painstakingly pointing out how little is left in this business for them.
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