Fannie Brown and Freddie Darling
With this Keystone Cops British government I can almost believe anything.
When the credit crunch first hit and it became obvious Gordon Brown’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) had failed to spot the problems at Northern Rock and in the wider financial sector, what did Gordon do? He pushed for a global version of it to police the planet against similar disasters in the future.
Apart from stable doors and all that, it proved that there’s a disconnection from reality in the Brownian universe.
Today we read that Chancellor Alistair Darling is furious that Brown intends to put up £40 billion ($73bn) of taxpayers’ money to underwrite the flakiest mortgages in Britain.
At a time when the curious American institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which had their origins in the Great Depression and have stuck around ever since — are reported to be insolvent, Brown is intent on a British version.
Fannie Brown and Freddie Darling, perhaps?
The Chancellor reacted with uncharacteristic sharpness in a Guardian interview recorded two weeks ago but published yesterday. This is the worst economic crisis for 60 years, he growled, challenging Brown’s denial-laden narrative of events. He then appeared on the BBC apparently under orders to quote a text prepared by the looming ogre next door in Downing Street.
He did. Five or six times, each repetition virtually identical. At one point I thought I was watching one of those tape loops that plays the same bit of footage over and over again.
Just as I was beginning to get dizzy and drift off into a hypnotic trance, I cottoned on that this was Darling’s way of signalling to us in the real world that this unfortunate man, now trapped in his Treasury nightmare, was speaking to a script. Rather like Middle East hostages trying to show us they don’t really mean what they’re saying and are saying it under duress.
I feel truly sorry for Alistair Darling. He has always been known as “a safe pair of hands.” Now those hands are stangely missing. Chopped off, tied behind his back, maybe? Who knows?
He’s on the way out, his head about to be sliced off on the internet in the manner of recent hostage unfortunates.
His legacy?
Years of loyal service to his master, a reputation as the quiet man of the Cabinet, little else that anyone can remember, oh, and Fannie Brown and Freddie Darling.
Or will Ed Balls take the rap for that?
