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John Murray
Good riddance to a basket case decade
I spent the festive period musing over what I’d buy Prime Minister Gordon Brown for Christmas and wondering what new year resolutions he might be making.
It wasn’t that I was preoccupied by such thoughts, I just felt they might stop me dwelling on other things such as my inevitable round-up of the year or the decade.
So what would I have liked to have given our PM? Well, I thought a self-improvement book might be up his street, along the lines of Teach Yourself Economics. I also thought something on leadership might not go amiss.
As for new year resolutions the jury is out on Brown’s kiss of life for the economy, an observation that brings me back to my round-up of the decade pundits have dubbed the noughties.
I suppose the word noughties has a certain ring to it but tagging the decade by a letter might be more useful. But what letter? First I tried C for credit crunch, credibility and capital adequacy but it didn’t work that well. I played around with other letters but finally settled for B.
Consider Bush, Brown, Blair, Bin Laden, the bombing of Baghdad, the British in Basra, Basle, basket case banks and building societies - most notably Northern Rock, the Royal Bank of Scotland and, to show that I’m not losing focus, Bradford & Bingley.
So could the letter B hold up in 2010 and beyond? I suppose if Labour wins the general election we’ll have more Brown and Balls, probably along with another long spell of spin and spend. But that’s another story.
JOHN MURRAY
CONSULTING EDITOR
LENDING STRATEGY
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