The mortgage surprise.

Peter tells us of Brown's mortgage surprise.

On paper, this measure could go down well with the public - after all, it should limit repossessions as the economy worsens.  But many of Brown's schemes often come with a sting in their tail.  The FT have been told that the cost of this latest will be £100 million, although the overall liability could push £1 billion.  Let's see what more emerges about this.

If I could add a little more about this?

There isn't a celluliod rat in hell's chance that this scheme will cost that little.

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The tyranny of the shareholders

What does AIG have in common with the auto industry? Beyond bailouts, of course. One answer is that public shareholders are really part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

In a publicly-listed company, management works, first and foremost, for shareholders. At AIG, the incentives are even more skewed: the CEO, Edward Liddy, is working for $1 a year -- plus a large slug of equity.

And so we end up with a situation where Liddy wants yet another AIG bailout, this one to reduce the amount of interest that the company is paying...

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Brown's mortgage surprise

A quick, capsule review of the Queen's Speech debate in the Commons: Cameron was at his rapier-like best, while Brown performed his typical dodge-the-question act.  But the PM did have one trick up his sleeve, and quite a big trick it was too.  He announced an agreement between the Government and the UK's 8 largest banks, by which downturn-hit homeowners will be entitled to defer their mortgage interest payments for up to 2 years.  The Government will guarantee against any losses that the banks would otherwise suffer because of this.

It's...

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The value of blogging

Yes, I know, blogging about blogging (or as it is known, meta-blogging). But I do actually think there's something rather remarkable going on out there in the world of economics blogs just at the moment. We've just had the financial part of the economy fall over and of course we'd all like to know why and more importantly, how do we make sure that having fallen over it doesn't leave us with another Depression?

The answer there of course means that we want to know why the '29 crash did indeed lead to the Depression: then at least we'd know...

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Childhood Sexual Abuse

It is indeed an important matter. But I'm not sure that we're helped very much by this sort of writing from the Lancet. Here's what the Guardian says:

Some 5-10% of girls and 1-5% of boys have been subjected to penetrative sex, usually by a family friend or relative. If sexual abuse is defined more widely - as anything from being shown pornographic magazines to rape - it is estimated that it will include at least 15% of girls and 5% of boys.

10% of girls are raped by paedophiles? Surely not. Here's the actual Lancet paper.

During...

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