Comment, analysis and other offerings from Wednesday’s FT,
Rachman blog: Obama’s speech: Well, I’m sorry but that was a bit of an anti-climax.
Parts of it sounded like they were written by a 27-year-old sitting in Starbucks… Some of the lines didn’t even make sense.
Comment: The case for public ownership of Lloyds and RBS
Things are bad – unprecedentedly bad – so we need to consider radical actions and actions that would have been thought lunatic a year or so ago. John McFall and Jon Moulton call for nationalisation. John McFall is chairman of the Commons Treasury committee and Jon Moulton is founder of Alchemy Partners.
Martin Wolf: Pity Obama
Collapse of globalisation is now no small risk. Barack Obama is present at the re-creation of the global economic system. It is a challenge he has to take up.
US Daily View, video: Banking mayhem, plus ca change
Francesco Guerrera, the FT’s US banking and business editor, looks at the banks’ “desperate fight for survival” and options for the US government.
Editorial comment: Time for the UK to mobilise against banking problems
Letting the Bank of England trade corporate securities gives it a tool later to engage in quantitative easing if further interests rate cuts are not enough. In total war, full mobilisation is the only way.
Lex: The Aggregator
A vehicle to buy up troubled real-estate assets from ailing banks would unfortunately lack the Terminator’s unstoppable might. But the government should not continue shovelling subsidies into the banking system without demanding greater control.
Economists’ Forum: Of banks and turtles
Pondering the role of the central bank in a modern economy, one cannot help but be reminded of the apocryphal story of the western explorer who encounters an eastern mystic teaching his disciples that the world rests on the back of a giant turtle, says Christopher Carroll of Johns Hopkins University.
Insight: The drag on emerging markets
While no market is safe from the general malaise, US economic weakness remains the biggest drag on any chance of recovery in the emerging markets, with the so-called decoupling theory completely debunked, writes the FT’s David Oakley.
View of the Day: Where US equity investors should focus
US equity investors should concentrate on companies, industries and sectors that have the means to fund themselves, says Brian Belski, strategist at Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch.
